But while staying at home with my young children, I needed a renaissance in my reading life, which had sadly dwindled over the years. In a season when my time to read was fragmented by many an interruption, I found that my desire to discover “who did it” kept me reading until the final page. I first happened upon the contemporary series Maisie Dobbs, about a young female British private detective working between the World Wars in London. After that introduction, I became curious about the origins of this genre that I had long ignored. I had read Dorothy Sayers’s essays, so I decided upon a friend’s recommendation to give her Lord Peter Wimsey series a try. I had soon devoured all her 11 novel-length mysteries and her five short story collections.

When I had exhausted Sayers’s writing, I felt forlorn and bereft without her companionship, and I cast about for another female British novelist in a similar vein. I was surprised and humbled to find Agatha Christie’s mysteries quite engaging and creative. In my hubris, I did not realize how much she had done to create the formula of the mystery, which felt trite to me largely because it had been so widely adopted. I also hadn’t appreciated the way in which she subverts or challenges some of the expectations of the formula in books like And Then There Were None or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

I was also delighted to discover Christie’s little known non-mystery books, which she wrote under a pen name after her publisher refused to publish them under her name. Her novel Absent in the Spring, written under the name Mary Westmacott, is a psychological exploration of a British woman stuck at a desert train station on her way home from Baghdad to England. While there is little outward action in the story, Christie adeptly lays bare the human heart’s capacity for both self-awareness and self-deception. Without the constraints of a whodunnit to solve, her ability to paint a complex picture of human characters in their flaws and strengths shines.

After reading about 20 of Christie’s novels, I needed a little more variety, so with a promise to the Queen of Crime that I would be back, I moved chronologically on to 20th-century mystery writer P.D. James, her 14 Adam Dalgleish novels, and her two mysteries starring the young female detective Cordelia Gray. James’s mysteries plumb the depths of her characters, their settings, and their psychology in as much detail as they give to the events that lead to solving a murder.

What all three women shared, beyond being female, British, and gifted at writing, was a common Christian faith and membership in the Church of England. All three women wrote mysteries set in church or monasteries — Sayers’s The Nine Tailors; Christie’s Murder in the Vicarage; and James’s Death in Holy Orders and A Taste for Death. While none used a heavy hand in their integration of faith and writing, their work reflects their theological commitments in a typically understated British manner. Sayers is the most overtly theological figure of the three, given she not only wrote novels but wrote theological essays.

However, in her novels she abides by her theory of how Christian should make art, which she espouses in the essay “Why Work?” — that Christians are to bring glory to God through their art, not by labeling it Christian, but by creating the best art they can. Christie again and again offers a candid presentation of the human heart, its inclinations to evil, and the damage they end up doing in the lives of one’s neighbors. James weaves references to the Anglican liturgy into her works with titles such as Devices and Desires, fashions her main character Adam Dalgleish as the son of a priest, and offers fascinating comparisons between the role of the priest and the role of the detective in society.

The mystery genre in its classic forms, as employed by all three authors, works out of philosophical commitments that are compatible with and often drawn directly from deeply Christian values — the evils of violent crime against one’s neighbor, the role of the person who pursues the criminal, the inevitability of a people’s sins “finding them out” (Num. 32:23), the role of confession in the ultimate triumph of truth, and the restoration of peace. Its anthropology begins with the dual belief in both human depravity, which leads in most mysteries to murder, and in human dignity, which spurs the detective to seek justice for the victim. At its best, the mystery genre revels not in inventing increasingly lurid tales, but in adhering to these basic commitments of the genre. Sayers, Christie, and James explored the interplay of these themes in their unique ways, but all three employ them out of their fundamentally Christian commitments.

There is yet one more way we might see the mystery as a deeply Christian genre, thanks to the insights of Dr. David Steinmetz. In his chapter in the book The Art of Reading Scripture, Steinmetz compared the Bible to a mystery novel, in the sense that it can (and must) be read both forward and backward. Pieces of information that didn’t make sense to the reader when first mentioned begin to gel into a cohesive story when the truth is revealed. In the same way, the more we read the Bible, the more we pick up on hints, clues, and foreshadowing that point forward to the time when, as the creed puts it, Christ will come to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom of peace and justice will have no end.

So if you pick up a mystery by Sayers, Christie, or James this summer, first and foremost I hope you enjoy it as simply good art, that its goodness reflects the goodness of the authors’ Creator. But perhaps you’ll also find that it reminds you of the grand story of God’s complex and cohesive work, which weaves its way through all the twists and turns of Scripture to a just, peaceful, and satisfying end.

In Part III, Wright draws out the practical implications of recentering our hope on the resurrection, including a plea that the church deepen and broaden its observation of the Easter season. His appeal could potentially have a significant and practical influence upon the church’s celebration of Easter, were we to take his advice and flesh it out through a variety of festive and life-giving practices. Wright points out how we put lots of energy into observing the 40 days of Lent, but we often give only one day to a full-bodied Easter celebration, even though the church calendar spends 50 days on the Easter season. Andrew Peterson put it succinctly it at his recent Resurrection Letters concert held on Easter Monday in Nashville: “The feast outweighs the fast.” It follows, then, that our practices should center as much on Easter as they do on Lent.

Perhaps you feel inspired by the vision Wright casts for the Easter season, as I do; perhaps you want to take him up on the suggestion that “we take a hard look at how we keep Easter, in church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system.” However, like me you might also struggle to come up with practical ways to live this out. There’s a lot of common knowledge out there about ways to observe Lent — giving up dessert, fasting from meat on Fridays, giving up a bad habit, reading a Lenten devotional — but we are largely at a loss when it comes to Easter practices. I reckon this stems mostly from a lack of imagination. To get some practical ideas about how to live into the Easter season, let’s unpack the ideas Tom Wright shares in Surprised by Hope:

If Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again — well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the ground ivy may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s Lent for you. But you don’t want simply to turn the garden back into a neat bed of blank earth. Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving.

If Lent is a time of negation — disciplining ourselves through self-denial, sacrifice, and fasting; renouncing the sinful desires that draw us from the love of God (BCP, p. 302), and repenting of and reducing the habits from our lives that impede our spiritual lives — then Easter is a time for addition — filling the space we have hollowed out during Lent with the good, growing things for which God has made us. Having spent a season allowing God to strip away what needs to go from our lives, we emerge from Lent renewed in the power of the resurrection, eager to live more fully into what God made us to be and do.

This is a beautiful vision, setting up a helpful contrast between the complementary purposes of the cycle of fasts and feasts in the church calendar. It is still, however, an analogy; how are we to bring this down to earth and make it practical? Wright gives an outline of some concrete ideas, both in Surprised by Hope and in his book released in 2013, Scripture and the Authority of God.

He puts special emphasis on the role of creative work and expression in the way we celebrate Easter: “[W]e should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival.” Creativity, according to Christian thinkers like Dorothy Sayers, is one way in which humankind demonstrates that we are made in God’s image. Therefore, it is fitting that we use our creative gifts to proclaim the good news of Christ’s resurrection through any vehicle available to us, whether poems, songs, or stories.

As Christians in a sacramental tradition, we recognize the power of using the languages of all our physical senses to hear, tell, see and feel the greatest story year after year. This could look like enjoying a special dessert each Sunday in Easter, creating floral arrangements for our kitchen tables all season long, or listening to Handel’s Messiah regularly, especially the neglected music of the second and third parts, which focus on Christ’s passion, resurrection, and ascension.

When in Scripture and the Authority of God he casts a vision for the Christian observation of the Sabbath, Wright gives us an unexpected complement to his description of Easter season living. The link between Sabbath practices and Easter practices might not be immediately obvious to us; but the connection comes to light in Wright’s insistence that any practice of Sabbath in Christian communities must reflect the reality of Christ’s resurrection. The practice of the Sabbath in the Old Testament, he says, served as a signpost looking forward to the new age God would inaugurate; now that Christ has come, “to continue celebrating sabbaths [would be] to focus on the signposts when we have already arrived.” Instead, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection transform the Sabbath, enabling Christians to enter into Wright calls “celebration rest,” combining the joy of remembering Christ’s resurrection with the rest that Jesus has won for us — peace with God and “rest” from our ancient enemies — sin, death, and the devil. Christian rest, therefore, is not found primarily in a temporary physical rest, according to Wright; rather, in Christ, Sabbath rest takes on a “perpetual” and “eternal” dimension that reflects the freedom and peace we find in being reconciled to God.

While that sounds rather abstract, he paints a picture of what “celebration rest” might look like, practically speaking, and it sounds a lot like the ways we can celebrate the Easter season for all 50 days. Wright describes celebration rest as “a way of recognizing in creative ways, in music and art and dance and family life, the fact that heaven and earth have indeed come together in a new way in Jesus, that the ‘rest’ of the old sabbath has been replaced by the ‘celebration’ of the new.” Here he extends the description beyond the creative realm to add a few other motifs: “the meal, family, service, peace, justice, love — these are the notes of Sunday for those who see the fulfillment of Sabbath in Jesus.” Communal meals play a central role in Christian feasting, and take on a particularly Christian dimension when families include our brothers and sisters in Christ who are single, widowed, or distanced from their biological families, reflecting the reality that we are part of the family of God.

I would take Wright’s phrase “family life” to mean something akin to what the Roman Catholics call the “domestic monastery” — the insight that families can function as their own type of religious community, with daily and weekly household rhythms, including prayer, reflection, and teaching that cultivate the spiritual lives of its members. This can be a place to “keep the feast” through daily prayer, devotional reading, and seasonal music. Finally, including service to others in this list hearkens back to the teaching of both the Old Testament and of Jesus that, if someone is in need on the Sabbath, God’s people should put aside their religious practices to help them. In doing so, Wright would say that we create new signposts, pointing toward the future where God will wipe away our tears and bring healing to the nations (Rev. 21:4 and 22:2).

While this Easter season has already begun, it’s not too late to try taking on a new practice; it might lean toward creativity, meals, new household rhythms, or serving others, all in the spirit of the joy and rest Jesus has won for us in his victory over the grave. Below you’ll find a list of some resources that may help you keep the feast during this Easter, whether individually or as a family. I invite readers to share their ideas in the comments on this post. And may Easter become for us a season when, to borrow language from The Collect for Sundays in the Morning Prayer service, God makes us glad with the 50 days’ remembrance of the glorious resurrection of his Son our Lord. (BCP, p. 98)

Host an Easter Feast in the Company of the Saints:

Dining with the Saints

Cooking with the Saints

Follow your meal with a viewing of Babette’s Feast.

Put on an Easter soundtrack:

Handel’s Messiah, especially Parts II and III

Rise Up My Love — Healey Willan

Easter Oratorio — Bach

Andrew Peterson’s Resurrection Letters, Prologue, I, and II

Read an Easter Book/Devotional during Easter:

Bread & Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide by Sarah Arthur

Living the Resurrection by Eugene Peterson

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer

John Mark Comer’s description of how his family observes the Sabbath sounds a lot like “celebration rest.” See his chapter on Sabbath in Part III, “Four practices for unhurrying your life,” as well as his corresponding online workbook, How to Un-Hurry.

Pray Through the Stories of the Resurrection:

Many of us have some familiarity with the Stations of the Cross, but few of us are aware that Pope John Paul II developed the Stations of the Resurrection, 14 stations that help Christians enter into the story of our Lord’s resurrection with as much devotion and detail. You can follow along with a video version of the Stations of the Resurrection.

The passages from Surprised by Hope are from pages 256-57, Kindle edition.

The passages from Scripture and the Authority of God are from pages 143-74.

Listen to an interview with author Amy Peeler on The TLC Podcast.

One day my two elementary school-age children, a boy and a girl, were talking with two of their friends, another boy and another girl. One of the boys said, “God is a boy,” and one of the girls said, “No, he isn’t!” When I asked what they were talking about, they told me they were debating whether boys or girls are better. Eventually this topic led to a statement by the boys, “Jesus was a boy,” followed by the next logical step: “God is a boy.”

The children’s debate highlighted for me the importance and relevance of Amy Peeler’s topic. In Women and the Gender of God, Peeler tells of overhearing a similar conversation at her son’s 8th birthday party. These innocent conversations demonstrate how our understanding of God trickles down to our understanding of men and women in significant ways.

If men or women are ontologically more like God, it is easy to conclude that one sex is inherently “better” than the other — or, as Peeler puts it, “supports for a masculine God are … dangerous because all humans suffer when God is more like some than others.” The question of whether God is male — or more masculine than feminine — is not an obscure debate reserved for those with Ph.Ds. Even children sense that our beliefs on this subject will have a direct effect on our perspectives on human nature and the relative worth of men and women.

Peeler reveals the assumptions we unconsciously make about what Scripture does and does not say about God’s relationship to gender. “One of the ways to correctly understand the masculine paternal language for God is to attend to what the text does and does not say,” she writes.

She distinguishes between what Scripture says about God and layers of accrued logic that are not required by Scripture. Her probing analysis threw the importance of these issues into sharper relief for me as a reader. At certain moments I found myself troubled by the implications of what she raised, because more was at stake theologically, if God is male, than I had realized. But after stirring up those concerns, she brings a remarkable level of resolution to them through her examination of Scripture.

For example, she explores the account in Luke of Jesus’ conception and whether it supports God’s maleness. Since God takes the place of man in Jesus’ conception, does this support God’s maleness? On the surface, this plain fact might indicate God’s maleness is an open-and-shut case.

Peeler peels back the layers of assumptions we unconsciously make about the text. She parses in detail how God’s participation in Jesus’ conception is decidedly unlike the natural role a man plays. The biblical account of God’s interactions with Mary stands in stark contrast to pagan narratives of gods impregnating women. Whereas the pagan gods assume male bodies and engage in sexual acts, often through coercion or deception, the Gospel of Luke takes care to show that Mary becomes pregnant only after she agrees to cooperate with God, and her pregnancy occurs by supernatural means, without violation of her personhood.

Instead, Mary experiences an “overshadowing” that harkens back to God’s creative acts at creation and God’s presence over the tabernacle in the wilderness. Peeler concludes, “Because God does not act as a male acts, this account gives no justification to view God as male.” Instead, God’s role in the conception of Jesus highlights God’s otherness from creation, while also affirming God’s tender care and respect for Mary as a woman. Peeler argues that Jesus, in taking his male flesh from a woman, assumes the entirety of humanity, undercutting the argument that women need a female savior in order to have their humanity redeemed.

Peeler also considers whether God is more masculine than feminine, according to classical philosophical understandings; how Scripture honors and dignifies female bodies rather than scorning them as inferior; and how Mary’s role as a “gospel proclaimer” supports women’s participation in the ministry of the gospel.

Peeler affirms both God’s transcendence beyond the created order and the personal and direct way that God relates to us, inviting us to call him Father as a sign primarily of his goodness and compassion toward us. Her arguments deserve careful examination, both from scholars entering a long history of debate and from parents seeking to respond to their children’s curiosity about the nature of God.

Reading Divine Love made me more attentive to the art surrounding the Christmas story, while I have been using art as a reflective tool in the parish Bible study that I lead. As we have studied the women of the Gospels on Wednesday mornings this fall, one of our spiritual disciplines has been looking at art of those stories through the practice of visio divina.

Visio divina is a “riff” on the more traditional spiritual practice of lectio divina. Rather than focusing on the biblical text and its words, it uses visual art as the medium by which God speaks to us through his Word. While acknowledging that an artist’s interpretation of a biblical story represents the artist’s perspective, limitations, and biases, taking in the artist’s vision of the story, its characters, and its themes can deepen our understanding of and appreciation of the text and lead us into prayer. We consider how through a host of artistic choices — the style of the painting, the placement of the figures, their posture and facial expressions, and the use of symbols — artists bring these stories to life in a unique way. Reflecting on art in a conversation with others can be a powerful experience, as we glean unexpected lessons from other people’s observations and insights.

As I have done further research, gathering images of these stories to share in our Bible study, I have been drawn to art of the nativity from a period later than those that Drummond’s book covers — the turn of the 20th century. In particular I have been struck by the work of three artists, who sought to depict events from Scripture in a new way — Henry Ossawa Tanner, James Tissot, and Gari Melchers. Though different in their backgrounds, they had a common artistic goal: to paint with greater realism than much of the religious art that had preceded them. Tanner and Tissot both went to great lengths to do so, visiting the Holy Land in order to gain a sense of the New Testament’s original setting, landscape, and culture, so they could imagine and depict these familiar Bible stories in a way that reflected their original context.

In the spirit of visio divina, I offer the three following images as spiritual food for your reflection on Christ’s birth this Christmastide, accompanied with brief biographical information about the artist and my reflections on how these works can lead us into deeper devotion and prayer.

The Annunciation, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898

Tanner (1859-1937) was an African American artist. The son of an African Methodist Episcopal bishop, he made his home in Paris as an adult and took two extended trips to the Holy Land, which informed his many religious paintings.

In his depiction of the Annunciation, Gabriel is a slim column of light rather than an ornate angel with wings; the placement of the shelf behind Gabriel forms the shape of the cross and foreshadows how the course of events unfolding here will ultimately lead to the cross. The rumples in the bedclothes, rug, and clothes are an exercise of artistic realism that add to the sense of how Gabriel has burst upon a very ordinary scene that is not carefully curated and prepared.

Mary is young, a little afraid, pensive, and yet composed. The tilt of her head suggests she is listening carefully and pondering “what kind of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29). I like to think Tanner chose to depict the moment just before she says, “How will this be?” rather than the moment that so many depictions show, the moment of Mary’s acceptance: “Let it be to me according to your word.” Reading Amy Peeler’s book Women and the Gender of God recently has made me more attentive to the complexity of Luke’s depiction of Mary, which Tanner communicates here — she does not just immediately accept the role in demure submission, as she is shown to do in so much of the art of the Annunciation. Rather, she is taking in Gabriel’s words, considering the possibilities and ramifications, and asking questions. Gabriel takes her seriously and honors the mental, emotional, and spiritual process she goes through as she absorbs his announcement and God’s invitation, and allows her the time and space to come to her “yes.”

Do we think God expects us to turn into religious robots and offer instant obedience when asked to do something that will stretch us beyond what we think we can handle? Is there something God is asking of us, inviting us to do with him, and we think the holiest response would be to bypass any spiritual struggle on the way to saying “yes”? Can we see how God honors us in our discernment with his gentleness and patience, and how our “yes” to cooperating with God, while we accept that it will involve suffering, will become the path to great joy as well?

St. Joseph Seeking a Lodging in Bethlehem, Tissot, 1886-94

James Tissot (1836-1902) was a French artist who, after having a religious vision in a church in Paris in the middle of his career, began work on an extensive series of 365 paintings depicting stories from the life of Christ. He traveled to the Holy Land multiple times in order to see firsthand the places where these events occurred.

In his depiction of Joseph seeking a place to stay in Bethlehem, Tissot captures the narrow and chaotic streets of an ancient city. Joseph is all action, facing away from the viewer, calling up to an innkeeper, who gestures “no room” with his hands. Mary waits on the donkey’s back, not serene and placid but anxious and shy, holding her hand up to her face, perhaps shielding herself from the gaze of prying eyes looking at her from the window above. Three of the figures in the composition have their backs to the viewer, communicating a lack of connection to or concern for this couple’s plight. Three other figures — the child on the stairs on the right, and the women in the window on the left — look down on them in detached curiosity, but they do not offer help. Here, unlike in Tissot’s visitation, there are no family members greeting them with open arms, just a faint hope that someone will have mercy on them, a hope that grows dimmer with each rejection they receive. Tissot’s attention to Mary and Joseph’s feelings at this precarious moment is reminiscent of his painting The Anxiety of St. Joseph, which shows Joseph in his carpentry shop before the angel’s message in a dream, mulling over the news that Mary is pregnant and wondering what he should do in response.

Jesus came into a situation that was uncertain, to parents who were marginalized, sent on this journey far from their home in Nazareth by the Roman imperial system and without resources to pave the way before them. What a relief to know that God doesn’t turn up his nose at messy situations, that God doesn’t turn away when we feel at the end of our rope, left without good choices, far from comforting scenes. May we be encouraged that God doesn’t wait for us to have it all together before deigning to come and dwell among us.

The Nativity, Gari Melchers (1891)

I was surprised, when I first came across this image, to realize it was over a hundred years old; I expected the artist to still be living. As a member of the naturalist movement, Gari Melchers (1860-1932) sought to bring a realism to his work, born of out his goal to “paint only that which is ‘true and clear.’”

In contrast to so many manger scenes, in which all are at their best, composed, well-groomed, and piously adoring the Christ child, Melcher depicts Mary and Joseph’s rumpled exhaustion, Mary slumped beside Joseph as she leans on him for support. Joseph is vigilant, watching over the baby and his wife, but his shoulders appear heavy with the clock resting over them, and perhaps also with the responsibility that now lies upon him. And yet, given all that, they are mesmerized by the baby lying before them, who is the source of light in the scene rather than the lantern that sits on the floor behind the small manger. Joseph’s hands are folded in a very natural way, and yet they are also folded in devotion, as in so many nativity scenes that precede this one.

Emmanuel, God with us — the one who took on our flesh and came to dwell among us — is barely more than a smudge on the page. But he is here with Mary and Joseph in this simple and bare space, here in the midst of their struggle and fatigue, and already radiant, showing himself to be the one who gives light to every person (John 1:9). May we take heart that God is ready to enter into even the simplest and most tiring moments of our lives, ready to enlighten our lives with his presence.

Images drawn from Scripture have long been a source of education and contemplation in the Christian tradition, from the stained-glass windows of cathedrals to many paintings and sculptures. Given that our culture’s dominant forms of communication, such as movies, television, and social media, rely heavily on images, it may be time to revisit our tradition’s incredible treasure trove of scriptural images and allow them to spark in us deeper reflection and prayer.

The practice of visio divina, a twist on the tradition of lectio divina, guides Christians in reflecting on a visual depiction of a biblical story. While reflecting on art is one step removed from the text, it can still be a powerful way to engage with Scripture and see new facets of even very familiar stories.

Perhaps no story in the Bible is more familiar to us than that of the birth of Christ. As art historian and journalist Sarah Drummond puts it, “We are so familiar with the scene that we are in danger of failing to see, to wonder, to question, and to ponder.”

In Divine Love: The Art of the Nativity, Drummond gives us an entry point to seeing those events afresh. She invites us to look at and through these images to see the spiritual significance of the events they depict:

An image can be perceived and understood at different levels, and according to an ancient tradition, like Scripture, an image describes the inner world of man rather than external life. It can act as a reminder of the sacred: we know that the deepest meaning of the Nativity lies in a spiritual interpretation, and the mystery is encountered in the present moment.

Drummond draws together a remarkable range of images from the art traditions of Eastern and Western churches and surveys the history of the “spiritual interpretation” of these events.

This book is a visual feast, beautifully bound and printed, which results in crisp, clear images that leap off the page. Drummond introduces the reader to a variety of images from across the span of Christian art history, from the earliest depictions of the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night on a fourth-century Roman sarcophagus to Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel’s painting of Mary and Joseph participating in the census in Bethlehem, which happens to look very much like a 16th-century Flemish village.

Along the way, Drummond examines a set of recurring motifs in Nativity scenes in closer detail to consider when and how they began to be depicted, what they symbolized, and how their depiction changed over time. For instance, the setting of a cave as the birthplace of Christ was probably first depicted simply because it was the likeliest place for Jesus to be born just outside Bethlehem, with its rocky landscape and many caves and crevasses.

Over time, the cave took on symbolic meaning, representing the darkened human state, now illuminated by the light of Christ. The cave was eventually replaced in much of Western European tradition with the stable, reflecting a desire to place the story of Jesus’ birth in a more familiar setting.

Drummond also traces the history of including an ox and ass in Nativity scenes. They are not mentioned by the gospel writers, but appear frequently by the baby Jesus in the manger. These animals take on a range of meanings in different time periods. At one point they are thought to represent the Jewish people and the Gentiles; at another they represent humility, in their willingness to serve Christ by carrying his mother to Bethlehem and giving up their manger to be his bed.

Often some element of the recurring motifs, figures, and symbols Drummond studies is not found in the gospel accounts. Drummond tracks down those extrabiblical sources, whether a non-canonical account or a private revelation, such as St. Birgitta’s 14th-century vision of the infant Christ lying upon the ground, which had a major influence on Nativity scenes for centuries afterward.

This book beautifully blends art history, analysis, and an invitation to personal devotion and contemplation. Divine Love would be a useful resource for preachers looking for a fresh angle on retelling the Christmas story, and for Christians seeking to enter into the mystery of the Nativity through visio divina.

Anyone approaching the book with this desire will be aided by the abundance of quotations that Drummond weaves into her text from figures such as Augustine, Origen, and St. Francis. Their words illustrate the significance that particular elements of the Nativity story had in their day, and encourage the reader to reflect further on the miracle, mystery, and gift of the Incarnation.

For instance, Augustine encouraged his readers to relate to Christ’s Nativity in the most personal terms: “What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me?” With this book as our companion, may we pray along with the Christmas hymn: “O holy Child of Bethlehem, / descend to us, we pray; / cast out our sin and enter in, / be born in us today.”