Give Us This Day Devotionals, Volume 8: Hebrews-Revelation. By Charles Erlandson. Resource Publications, 2025. 370 pp. $38.38 (paperback), $57.06 (hardcover).
It has been many years since I regularly used a written daily devotional as part of my prayer or bible reading disciplines. In fact, my default position has been to be suspicious of written daily devotionals. I generally find them a bit shallow, and I tend to get frustrated with their “bite-sized” nature and scattershot presentation of Scripture. I find myself more edified in my devotions when the context of Scripture is highlighted by larger amounts of text that are read through more systematically.
In the introduction to the latest volume in the Give Us This Day series, the Rev. Charles Erlandson expresses a similar frustration, and the daily devotionals that comprise this series are indeed very different. In Give Us This Day, the New Testament text is covered in its entirety. Each chapter of the New Testament is covered over the course of one-to-three days. Indeed, I would consider Give Us This Day more of an eight-volume devotional commentary than a typical daily devotional. Think less of the long-running monthly Our Daily Bread booklets or Sarah Young’s (lamentably) popular Jesus Calling, and more of A Poor Man’s Commentary by turn-of-the-19th century Anglican priest Robert Hawker (a go-to resource for my own sermon preparation).
I received an electronic review copy of the eighth and final volume in Erlandson’s series from the publisher. This last volume covers Hebrews through Revelation. Per the introduction, the series began in 2006 as a daily lectio divina email but later evolved into a series of devotional books. The first volume, covering St. Matthew’s Gospel, was published in 2011. Each volume is available as a printed book and an eBook, but also remains available as a daily email subscription.
The title of the series comes from the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Erlandson points to St. Augustine and many other giants of this faith who have seen the Holy Scriptures to be the Bread of Life, as Written Word gives us the Word-Made-Flesh. The goal of the series is for Christians to receive a more generous diet of this Bread of Life, fulfilling the ethos of the Collect for the 2nd Sunday in Advent from the Book of Common Prayer to “hear… read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Scriptures.
To accomplish this goal, Erlandson wanted the series to be more than “snacking in a sort of hit and run fashion, as you rush to lead your ‘real life’” (Introduction). But he also wanted the series to be more than feeding the mind. To this end, the devotions in the series seek to wed the Scriptures to prayer and to practical obedience. He writes, “After all, haven’t many of us had teachers of the Bible in college who have read and studied the Word but who, apart from a life of prayer and obedience, use their studies to starve themselves and others?” Indeed.
As noted above, Erlandson initially approached writing the devotions as an exercise in Lectio Divina, which he describes as consisting of four steps. Below is the description from his introduction:
- lectio – reading/listening
- Cultivate the ability to listen deeply.
- Your reading is slow, formative reading.
- Your reading is based on previous reading and study.
- meditatio – meditation
- Gently stop reading when you have found a word, phrase, or passage through which God is speaking to you personally.
- Ruminate over this passage, as a cow ruminates or chews its cud.
- Say the passage over and over, noticing different aspects – “taste” it!
- Allow God’s Word to become His word for you at every level of your being and to interact with your inner world of concerns, memories, and ideas.
- oratio – prayer
- Pray – or dialog with God – over the passage.
- Interact with God as one who loves you and is present with you.
- Allow God to transform your thoughts, memories, agendas, tendencies, and habits.
- Re-affirm and repeat what God has just told you.
- contemplatio – contemplation
- Rest in the presence of the One who has come to transform and bless you.
- Rest quietly, experiencing the presence of God.
- Leave with a renewed energy and commitment to what God has just told you.
It was unclear to me whether Erlandson intended the devotions to be lectio divina for the reader. Though I am by no means a highly experienced practitioner of lectio divina, I doubt that a written devotional can take one through the steps of lectio divina. Indeed, going through the devotionals each day did not seem to me to be the same as practicing the lectio divina discipline. Nevertheless, I do not doubt that the written devotionals are the result of Erlandson’s own lectio divina exercises.
Erlandson also notes in the introduction that he had the historic quadriga hermeneutic in mind when interpreting the text. That is, in addition to the literal (or historic/grammatical) sense, he also wants the reader to be aware of the allegorical/typological, moral/tropological, and anagogical/eschatological senses. Though the devotionals themselves are mostly focused on the moral sense, the other senses are always waiting in the wings.
Each entry includes a lengthy devotional proper, in which the text is unpacked, largely focusing on that moral/tropological sense. This is followed by a prayer based on the moral lesson. Often that prayer is an original composition by Erlandson, though occasionally it is a Collect from the Prayer Book, a portion of a hymn, or a doxology from Scripture itself. The prayer is followed by a point from the moral for further meditation, which is then followed by a practical resolution.
Erlandson’s writing style is informal, but never to the point of being trite. His academic and literary influences often show through, but he never seems snobbish or above the reader. It is indeed deeply pastoral (another trait that reminds me of Hawker’s venerable series). In fact, Erlandson’s heart as a pastor is often on display. For example, in his entry for Hebrews 3, he writes, “The saddest thing I experience in my life as a pastor is not the suffering or death I see: it’s those who I see drifting or walking or running away from God.”
My only complaints about the book were a few minor typos (possibly due to my copy not being the final print or Kindle versions), an occasional odd abbreviation (such as using “JC” instead of “Jesus Christ” in the entry for Hebrews 9:1–14), and the consistent use of numerals rather than writing small numbers out (“1 thing” rather than “one thing,” for example). Indeed, I found this last editorial choice to be a bit distracting. That said, these complaints are very minor and do not subtract from the usefulness of the book.
Of particular interest for this volume for many readers will likely be Erlandson’s approach to Revelation. With the possible exception of Song of Songs, no other biblical book generates so much controversy when it comes to basic interpretive choices. Erlandson’s interpretive approach is best summarized in his own words from the entry on Revelation 5 (emphases and parentheses in the original):
While I don’t want to deny the future, eschatological side of Revelation, I firmly believe that Revelation is about something much closer to us than the Second Coming. I believe that Revelation, like the book of Hebrews and the entirety of the New Testament, is primarily about the death of the Old Covenant and the birth of the New Covenant, or New Testament (Testament and Covenant mean the same thing)…
One of the reasons I’m so adamant about the fact that Revelation (and other New Testament passages) are primarily about what Jesus Christ has already done is that when we place it all in the future, God becomes weak and remote in our lives. I believe that to the degree that you see that Jesus Christ is on the throne ruling now, and we with Him, to that degree our hearts will be filled with praise and thanksgiving and songs…
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, therefore, one of the ways we should pray it is with an eye to the Ascension of Jesus Christ and our ascension with Him. We pray to our Father who is in heaven, but the Son is also in heaven, and we are united to Him.
This lengthy quote shows that while Erlandson does not want to focus on the future elements of Revelation, he has not fallen into the heresy of full preterism, which sees everything in Revelation, the Olivet Discourses, etc., as fulfilled by 70 AD. Rather, consistent with the rest of the book, he is concerned about the moral/tropological element of Revelation. That is, what should I, as a Christian, be learning and applying from St. John’s Apocalypse here and now. This is indeed an important corrective for much of popular Christianity in America, whose views of Revelation are more influenced by Left Behind and John Hagee’s preaching than the historic quadriga.
While I have not read the other volumes in the Give Us This Day series, the final volume is well worth the purchase. Indeed, if it is any indication of the rest of the series, the final volume recommends the entire series as a worthy addition to a theological library. It could be a valuable devotional for any Christian who is serious about the Scriptures, as well as a valuable resource for those of us who regularly lead bible studies and preach to God’s people.
