2010-2011 Themes

Editor's Introduction: We concluded our 2009-2010 volume with an issue called, "Do Not Be Anxious About Tomorrow." In selecting that theme, we hoped to offer encouragement in the midst of uncertain times. But the times have become radically more uncertain as natural disasters, economic disintegration, and political gridlock dominate the daily news. Perhaps especially anxiety inducing are seismic events both natural and manufactured in which we feel utter powerlessness. Recent history has thrust into our lives what poet Robert Frost calls "Extremes too hard to comprehend at once." The Book of Job is a relentless exploration of just such a predicament. Our forthcoming issue themes are inspired by (but not limited to) this ancient story, in which Biblical scholar J. Gerald Janzen finds a "ground of hope."

Fenced In

Vol. XXVI, No. 1 (Nov/Dec/Jan)

All Proposals Due 3/15/10

Selections Made 4/06/10

Copy For Selected Materials Due 6/08/10

"Why is light given to one who cannot see the way, whom God has fenced in?" (Job 3:23). Job's life has crashed down on him. He had been taught and truly believed that his life was in God's safekeeping. Now his understanding of God's relationship with him has been plunged into incomprehension. Job can find no correlations between his outward activities or inward dispositions and the complete calamity that has befallen him. His desperate words convey the only insight he can muster—that God has corralled him as if he were an enemy rather than a righteous servant. What good is illumination when there is no evident way out of the enclosure? Many people in our time cannot see the way forward because forces larger than personal life have blocked every path. The extremes mount up: individual responsibility submerged by corporate irresponsibility, lifestyle commitments called into question by the threatening implications of global warming. We are immobilized by bewilderment. "I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?" (Ps. 121:1). Perhaps our issue title suggests that the source of our help lies within the very circumstances that constrain us. This phrase offers one way to think about Advent and the Incarnation. In Jesus Christ we see God's decision to become "fenced in" by complete self-giving to the human condition. We invite material that illumines biblical, historical, or contemporary experiences of being "fenced in" by showing how they also encompass or point to sources of help.

Cross-Purposes

Vol. XXVI, No. 2 (Feb/Mar/Apr)

All Proposals Due 4/15/10

Selections Made 5/11/10

Copy For Selected Materials Due 7/28/10

Part of the energy that drives the Book of Job's narrative is how the words of Job's three friends stand increasingly at cross-purposes with their intention to comfort him in his affliction. Determined to find the reason for Job's suffering, they succeed only in amplifying it by their unblinking confidence in the correctness of their theology. They are "wise in their own conceit" (Job 37:24). Something is going on in Job's life that is greater than their theology, their wisdom—something that, as Job later learns in his dramatic encounter with God, can only be met in humility and silence: "See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth" (Job 40:4). The elements of Job's time with his friends that work at cross-purposes with one another point to an underlying mystery of such generative power that good can be brought forth even from what is not good. A cross purpose is woven throughout the story of Job, and this same purpose appears on the barren crest of Calvary. As we prepare to enter the season of Lent and to celebrate the feast of Easter, what "wisdom" might we reconsider and perhaps release in humility for the sake of a fresh and freshening encounter with God's wisdom? How does our faith form and inform us about God's ways so that we live well in God's sight? What does such living look like today? What are the stories that illumine living at cross-purposes with the world and what disciplines of mind and spirit allow us to sustain such living?

The Price of Wisdom

Vol. XXVI, No. 3 (May/Jun/Jul)

All Proposals Due 5/15/10

Selections Made 6/29/10

Copy For Selected Materials Due 10/06/10

Job 28 is a hymn to the mystery of wisdom's whereabouts. Drawing on the image of mining and sea diving as ways of acquiring precious metals and gems, the text asks, "But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?" (Job 28:12). Commenting on this chapter, one author observes: "Truly precious, priceless things are often mined from deep, dark places." Yet who willingly enters shadowed passages of experience in search of wisdom's riches? Life itself sometimes thrusts us into the outer chambers of such ominous environs, offering us an opportunity to go deeper. Or we may find ourselves in twilight regions because love or commitment or fidelity has drawn us there. Indeed, the cross is just such a site, a point of penetration into the depths where the priceless wisdom of God is acquired at the cost of living the paradoxical convergence of divine love and human judgment, of divine judgment and human love (Easter). In this cruciform journey toward the "place of understanding," the Spirit is our comforter and guide through the deep, dark places of human life (Pentecost). Our issue will explore key deep, dark places in personal and social life and the costly wisdom that can be found in them. Which Scripture passages give insight into mining the deep places of life? What practices, ancient and contemporary, prepare us to seek, find, and pay the price of wisdom?

The Art of Loving

Vol. XXVI, No. 4 (Aug/Sep/Oct)

All Proposals Due 6/1/10

Selections Made 8/10/10

Copy For Selected Materials Due 1/26/11

The Book of Job is often described as an examination of the problem of suffering. How can an all-powerful and just God permit the evil of affliction and death? Certainly this theme figures prominently in the Book. Yet its dark, disquieting luminosity also powerfully, if obliquely, illumines the art of loving. Job's friends "met together to go and console and comfort him" (Job 2:11). What can we learn about the art of loving from the ways in which Job's friends relate to him and his circumstances? What practices of this art did they bring, or fail to bring, to Job's situation? How well did they succeed in their desire to show Job their love? How does the story of their days with Job help us to learn how to love better? What can be gleaned about the art of loving from the way God relates to Job at the end of the Book? Without expecting a focus on the Book of Job itself, we welcome submissions that examine different facets of this theme through various roles in the life of faith: pastor, parent, adult, child, colleague, friend, lover. What resources in Christian spiritual traditions can help us become more adept at the art of loving?

Please see our Writers' Guidelines for the mailing address and for more details.

"Selections Made" identifies the date by which we review and select for the issue all proposals or finished manuscripts sent by interested authors.

"Copy Due" indicates the date by which all contracted manuscripts for the issue are due. If authors have already sent full manuscripts, and these have been accepted in the "Selections Made" meeting, then those authors have no more to do until they receive edited copies of their manuscript for review and approval.