Sofa Spotlight - The Glory of the Cross, Tim Chester

It isn’t Lent anymore but here’s what I read for Lent this year. It’s a devotional for Lent that goes through parts of the book of John. (A detail I failed to read on the front cover and wondered why all the readings were coming from John and no other Gospel). 

I didn’t read it alone – I read it with a friend and then we met and talked about what we read – or messaged about it. I’m not a huge reader of devotionals so I wasn’t sure I would make it through, but I surprised myself and stuck with it.

The first thing that I learnt was that there are a lot more weeks in Lent than I realised. Each week of Lent has a different section and each section starts on the Sunday. You read a big chunk of John and then the rest of the week is spent looking at little bits of what you read on the Sunday. By big chunk I mean part of a chapter – but some of the chapters in John are quite long.

I also played around with what time of day I was reading this. At the start I was reading it last thing at night – but on Sunday nights when you have to read more I found I wasn’t taking it in as well. The problem with first thing in the morning is that there’s a rush to get ready for work and so by the end I was reading it on my lunch break – when I was properly awake and didn’t have to be anywhere.

One of the reasons I’m not so keen on devotionals is if you miss a day you have to play catch up. Probably the fear of catch up is what kept me reading and on top of it. I did miss a few days though but that was ok – during the week the readings are short enough to catch up but not feel like you’re rushing to get through it for the sake of it. The other thing that probably stopped me giving up was reading it with someone. There was no way I was going to show up with nothing to say so I had better get on and read it.

I would definitely recommend it though – and maybe don’t even wait for next Lent to start it. It was nice to read parts of John and see a different take on them. For me the biggest surprise came right at the end on Easter Sunday with the start of John 20. There was something there that I hadn’t noticed before (you need to read it and get to the end if you want to know what it was) and because I was taking my time over it I got to not only notice but think deep about it too.