A fresh take on Today in Christian History
By Jennifer Woodruff Tait
Last evening a young college student told me that her History of Western Civilizations class was boring. An endless string of facts and dates had turned the exciting stories of European history into dry bones. What a shame!We at CHI hope to take every opportunity to present Christian History in an interesting and engaging fashion. We hope you’ve enjoyed our “Quote of the Day” feature throughout 2015, and our “Story of the Day” which debuted in 2014. While these two features will still be available on our Today in Christian History page, this year we will keep it fresh with daily inspiration in the form of a “Devotional Classic”: daily readings compiled by great Christian authors of the past and following the rhythm of the Christian year. These quotes will, we hope, bless you each day--as well as lead you to contemplate the meaning of the year from a Christian perspective as it passes.
We’ve drawn from dozens of great thinkers from hymn writers and poets to preachers and missionaries. We’ll hear from beloved favorites like C. H. Spurgeon and George MacDonald, and we’ll get to know some less familiar voices such as Christina Rossetti and François Fénelon. And of course along the way we’ll touch on the uniquely interesting stories surrounding the authors. Here’s a small taste from our January 1 classic by G. K. Chesterton:
“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.”
For many years now I’ve found worshiping according to the Christian year with classics of Christian history to be a profound asset to my devotion and prayer. May it be so too for you.
P.S. Our daily e-mails, quarterly magazine, and all the other resources on our website are possible because of donations from readers like you. Please consider making a year-end donation to help us tell the story of the church for generations to come.