150 - For All Your Seasons

For All Your Seasons
By Carnegie Samuel Calian
Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1979. 135 pp. $7.50.

This volume presents sermonicessays on a host of subjects ranging from "Accepting Yourself" and "Family Responsibilities" to "Aging" and "Overcoming Boredom." Full of homey advice and observations, these chapters differ from the Customary books on such subjects in that each chapter is prefaced with a lengthy biblical passage. Some of the material originally appeared as a series of articles in Enquiry magazine.

Calian's premise is that the Bible is a guidebook for all the "seasons" of life, even though it remains an unused resource by most people. The book is divided into five sections: doubts, relationships, midlife, aging, and stress. The chapters concentrate more on the biblical passage than on the subject to which each is addressed. The chapter on "repairing a reputation," for instance, focuses on the situation surrounding the runaway slave in the book of Philemon more than it does on reputation.

This is not so much a self-help book as it is a general consideration of certain subjects, each accompanied by an interpretation of a biblical passage.

David B. Watermulder
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church
Bryn Mawr, Pa.