Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann, whose thoughtful and reflective works on the Hebrew Bible have ensured that the term ""Old Testament theologian"" is not an oxymoron, offers distilled wisdom from his 35 years of teaching in Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth. At the seminaries where he has taught, professors traditionally open their classes with prayer-a practice that for some might devolve into a quick nod to convention, but Brueggemann has always presented the opportunity to involve students more intimately in the assigned biblical texts. This marvelous little book of Brueggemann's start-of-class prayers will have readers cheering, especially when he writes that ""much public prayer in the church is careless and slovenly, and... what passes for spontaneity is in fact a lack of preparation.""