A Book You Should Know About: Dwell

What does it mean to be spiritual? We humans inhabitbodies. We are not shades or ghosts or zombies. We are, like Jesus,enfleshed. And that makes for an embodied spirituality.

My friend and colleague, Barry D. Jones, has written a deep butaccessible book—Dwell: Life with God for the World (IVP)—that shows how it looks to allow “the logic of theIncarnation to inform our vision of the spiritual life.” Grounding his work in Jesus’s dwelling with humans in the flesh and God's intention for the world's wholeness ("shalom"), Jones walks readersthrough practices that create space for an infusion of God’s vision. In such a world there is no room forisolationism. Nor is there an approach to worship where the transformativebecomes merely the therapeutic. Rather, we live in true community and we do solocally—blessing our communities, and not just our communities of faith. As theBabylonian exiles were called to do, we seek the good of the places where welive.

In a context of grace we rest not because weare supposed to stop having fun once a week, but so we can stop to savorlife in the one who "shines on all that's fair." We pray, opening ourselves to a God who is good and kind and just and desires for his world to be so. We practicehospitality—literally, loving strangers—because God is hospitable. We fast andwe savor food (i.e., feast) because God in his great love both gave us opportunities to benefit others through our sacrifice and taste buds through which to savor his creation.

The psalmist wrote, “The earth is the Lord’s and fullnessthereof” (Ps. 24:1). Those who shall inherit the earth have five senses withwhich to perceive God and his world. So Jones helps readers know how to be with God and as a result of that union to be for the world. In order to become fully mature spiritually, we need both.

Highly recommended.