A week before Christmas, my three-year-old got it in her head that I should get a book for Christmas. That day, I found one worth picking up, and she “secretly” wrapped it for me with her Mom’s help. That book has now been a daily part of my life for nearly month and will be for the coming eleven, and I confess to being somewhat tickled to have found it.

This 365-page devotional contains daily entries from Christians in every century of the last twenty. A casual scan of the names on each page’s top reveals a number of well-known headliners from Church History class: Augustine, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther. But further flipping turns the “Who’s Who” list into a “Who’s That” query: Daniel Defoe, Hilary of Poitiers, Theognostus, and the Scillitan martyrs to list a few.

The beauty of the book to me is in its width of representation. Various sources in recent years have directed my faith back to aged but fresh wells, particularly a number from the Catholic and Orthodox streams. These are exactly the materials so seldom found in any typically Evangelically-flavoured Christian bookstore in the Western hemisphere, and that’s why I was so pleasantly surprised to find a quality volume like this with Zondervan stamped on its spine, on a shelf in a local shop.

So to my three-year-old sweetie: Thank you, Love. Daddy loves the gift.

And to my cohort-through-the-centuries, I look forward to trekking with you this year. Lead me to where you’ve been and share with me the Lord who led and taught you. I come open.