Devotional Books

Each new year I evaluate the devotional books I use as part of morning prayer. I always keep a few and then switch others out. The list below represents the ones I use on an ideal day, in roughly the order I move through them.

For the order of Scripture readings, I use the St. James Daily Devotional Guide for the Christian Year. This guide moves through the New Testament once a year and the Old Testament every two years, with a good balance between reading systematically through books of the Bible and taking into account major feast days such as Easter and Christmas.

Some others I find helpful are:

+ Eugene Peterson's Praying with the Psalms: I love Eugene Peterson's work. Last year I read through Living the Message. Each day there is an invitation to read a Psalm or part of a Psalm and he has brief meditation and a prayer. Often I pair this with the selected Psalm in Reading the Psalms with Luther.

+ I have always enjoyed reading the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. One way to do this, gem by gem, is through Bernard Bangley's By Way of the Desert.

+ Henri Nouwen's Bread for the Journey contains a brief meditation for each day of the year. Nouwen always has perspicuous insights into the "everyday" of living the Christian faith.

+ For a bit meatier fare, I enjoy J.D. Watson's A Hebrew Word for the Day. He also has a companion Greek volume that I read through last year.

I should probably say that it is not everyday that I get through all of these devotional books. At a bare minimum, I pray the Trisagion Prayers and try to read as many of the daily Scripture readings as I can, beginning with the daily appointed Gospel reading.

For shorter snippets of Scripture throughout the day, I subscribe via email to the Moravian Daily Texts. A friend of mine also gave me a copy of Bread for the Day, with a short Scripture reading each day based on the Revised Common Lectionary.

What devotional books / guides do you find most helpful for daily prayer and Scripture reading?