God's Story in 60 Snapshots

Bible 60: God’s Story in 60 Snapshots
By Andy Peck,
CWR
ISBN: 978-1853459238
Reviewer: Alec Gilmore

Sixty carefully chosen Bible passages, 30 from the Old Testament and 30 from the New Testament, to represent ‘the key turning points in the story of God and his people’ to stimulate prayer and reflection, to enable readers to see the wood for the trees and to encourage them to dig further into the surrounding territory, with a useful timeline which puts the passages in context.

The choice is fairly predictable, reflecting biblical scholarship over the last century and avoiding or ignoring the scholarly issues that evangelicals used to worry about 50 years ago. Peck then summarises the event, adds a modicum of background and offers a spiritual interpretation in terms of personal faith and devotion, in about 500 words each.

The concept is good and Peck’s execution will probably work for those people who are familiar with this somewhat limited approach to Bible reading, though such readers will need to be aware that this is ‘God’s story’ for personal devotion relating to one’s own spiritual life, not ‘God’s story as a resource for the way in which he handled nations, tribes, social and political issues', despite the fact that many of the passages were just that.

With this as a starter, however, many readers may go on to discover that these events all have a wider dimension with equally important relevance to the wider world in which they live most of their lives.

The Revd Alec Gilmore is a Baptist minister