Introducing... A Strange and Gracious Light

Hi friends!

Happy Friday. Many thanks for the prayers and notes of support over the last couple weeks as I worked to get the manuscript for A Strange and Gracious Light in order. Sent it off Monday, and I gotta tell ya… I’m really happy with how it turned out. I can’t wait to share it with you.

This will be the third book that I’ve published and one of the things I’m really aware of now is how special all the “little” moments along the way are. I’ve made a deal with myself that—not knowing what the future holds, as none of us do—I’m going to savor and enjoy every single one of those moments.

One such came yesterday. On a call with my publisher, Herald Press, I learned that SGL is up on Amazon for pre-order—quite a bit earlier than I thought it might! (Releases spring of next year). Available in soft or hardcover. I delighted in that bit of news all day.

Entailed in that tidbit was another treat—permission to share the cover with the world. So… drumroll… here it is:

I just honestly couldn’t be happier with it. Feels aesthetically consistent with the covers of my other books and—huge bonus—even passed the teenager test. I showed it to my 17-year-old son Gabe who said, “That’s sick.”

And that is high praise indeed.

Anyhow—there’s a lot of work still to come: several rounds of edits and all the marketing work and such. And when we get around to it, I’ll give y’all a heads up so you can join the launch team if you so desire. But still… this is a fun moment.

Go ahead and pre-order if you’d like and do share with your friends! (Publisher says pre-orders are reallllllly important.) I’m as proud of this work as anything I’ve done. It’s really a manifesto on the difference the story of Jesus makes to how we see and experience the world. A manifesto on the gospel, that is.

Here’s a little product description for you to pique your interest:

When we refer to the gospel only as the death and resurrection of Jesus and what that assures us for the afterlife, we miss out on the full depth of the gracious good news found in the person of Jesus Christ. As a result, most of our actual lives remain untouched by what the man from Galilee said and did during his life as told in the Gospels.
​
While the gospel is certainly not less than Jesus’ death and resurrection, it is much more than that—and that more is critical for how we imagine ourselves and the world around us. A Strange and Gracious Light cracks open the gospel story as the imaginative and prophetic spark of congregational life, modeling what it looks like to “think Jesus” and “speak Jesus” in our daily lives. Amid the meaninglessness of consumerism, mass entertainment, and political ideologies, the strange and gracious story of Jesus has the power to shatter our settled realities and resurrect our lives. Even now, the gospel light is breaking into our world  and illuminating how our lives are already and always drawn into the gracious mystery of God.

With vivid imagination and a winsome tone, pastor Andrew Arndt invites readers to engage with what transpires in the life of God’s people and creatively rediscover Jesus. Using the movements of the church calendar from Advent to Pentecost, this book points God’s people to how the story of Jesus illumines our life together and changes the way we see everything.

I think you’re gonna like it.

Much love, friends.

A