If you’re reading this and know anything about this blog, you will know that I like books, but what may be news to you is that I particularly like books that are beautiful and combine the work of a wordsmith and an artist. I think this all started years ago as I sat in a class room that unpacked the book of Psalms. In the Psalms the poets write songs of praise, lament, anger and awe whilst painting pictures in the readers mind. But I wasn’t always like this, I used to really struggle with the Psalms. I struggled with the raw emotions, both good and hard, so it was not a book I turned to often. Now, however, barely a week goes by where I am not in the Psalms by myself or with someone else and emerged in a word picture that either fills your mind with how great God is or helps you put words to your darkest emotions. How did that change come about? Let me introduce you to Heather Holdsworth…
Heather is a former lecturer of mine at Bible College, over two years she did many classes on the Psalms that opened my eyes to see the beauty that lies within the poetry, the raw emotions that the Psalmists explains and the God to whom they come and worship.
But that isn’t only an experience I had, now you can share a little of that experience too with Landscape of Hope. In this book Heather walks through the first 14 Psalms and helps you dig into them for the glorious riches that they contain. Each section begins with a new Psalm, there is a slightly longer explanation of the Psalm and the main theme that it touches on with illustrations of how we might resonate with that today. Following that Heather hones in on a couple of verses and pulls out phrase or a theme and helps us understand it better. That’s the word part of this book, and It is really good! Heather is a very gifted wordsmith who draws your attention to insights that will lift your eyes to see who God is and how He works in us.
The second aspect of this book is beautiful. Heather is a very talented artist who puts the words of Scripture into art form which makes the words of the Bible jump off the page. Each chapter of this book is accompanied by a work of art that Heather has done which opens up your eyes to the truth or theme that a particular verse is teaching. The drawings in this book will help you remember the Psalms, resonate with you and put words to picture as you read God’s Word. In addition to the actual art work that takes up many pages int he book, as you flick through you’ll also see little doodles here and there which just put a smile on your face as you go from page to page.
Here are two examples of the artwork in the book as a teaser for you from Psalm 3…
I’m a big fan of this book and think it would be a great addition to your library and I am interested to see how people use it (coffee table book, devotional through the Psalms, family devotional, etc.). My question is, and the question that I’m sure other who’ve read this book will be asking is, when will Heather do the rest of the Psalms?
Chalmers' Blog 