We continue our month of book-love with writer Lynne M. Baab.
Lynne is my dear friend and the author of numerous books, most recently Reaching Out in a Networked World (which is written primarily for churches but is also a great resource for writers) and Fasting. She is a Presbyterian minister and a lecturer in pastoral theology in New Zealand. She’s also the reason I have a book to my name: she put me in touch with my awesome editor at IVP. I love this woman!
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Apart from the Bible, the book that has influenced my faith the most profoundly is The Book of Common Prayer (BCP). Its clear and straightforward orthodoxy, coupled with eloquent and evocative language, has shaped the way I think about faith and the way I pray.
In my childhood, we worshipped in an Episcopal church 52 Sundays a year. My parents never talked about God, and we never read the Bible. But by the time I was an adolescent, I knew the communion and morning prayer services in the BCP by heart. The services included Psalm 100, most of Psalm 95, and other isolated verses from the Bible, so I had learned a bit of the Bible. Many long and beautiful prayers were and are inscribed in my memory.
By my mid-teens I walked away from the Christian faith because no one could answer the questions I had. At 19, I got those answers and came back to Christ. The Scriptures and prayers I knew by heart kept coming to mind.
“Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. . . .”
“We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.”
“We do not presume to come to this thy table, O Merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but Thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.”
I’m writing this blog post on a research trip to Australia, far from my own copy of the BCP. I could have looked up the prayers online, but I quoted them from memory. I wonder if I was accurate…
I love the BCP, too. I discovered it when I was 20 and studying in Britain for a quarter. After reading your post, I dug out my copy that I bought while I was there. It’s the old 1928 version with the KJV psalms and the prayers and collects full of thee’s and thou’s.
After reading a contemporary translation of the psalms for daily prayer for the past eight or ten years, coming back to the KJV is like pouring clear water over my soul. Yesterday, I read these beautiful verses:
Our heart is not turned back,
neither our steps gone out of thy way;
No, not when thou hast smitten us into the place of dragons
and covered us with the shadow of death…
Up, Lord, why sleepest thou?
Awake and be not absent from us forever…
For our soul is brought low to the dust;
our belly cleaveth unto the ground.
Arise and help us
and deliver us for thy mercy’s sake.
(Psalm 44:19-26)
The NRSV just doesn’t compare. Thanks for prompting me to pull the BCP off my shelf and immerse myself in its beautiful language!
Lynne, I’ve been a fan of the BCP since my time in Canada with the Anglicans. And their hymns are deep inside me too. Thank you for this, and miss you friend, -SL