Fire by Night: Finding God in the Pages of the Old Testament. This item is unavailable.Fire by Night: Finding God in the Pages of the Old Testament

What do we do with the Old Testament? How do we read words written in a world so different from ours, stories so ruthless and so filled with grace?

In Fire by Night, pastor Melissa Florer-Bixler invites readers to marvel at the Old Testament. Page after page, in stories and poems and prophecies, the Hebrew Scripture introduces us to a God who is unwieldy and uncontrollable, common and extraordinary, and who brings both life and death. Using stories from Scripture and from her ministry, Florer-Bixler braids together the text with the sometimes ordinary, sometimes radical grace of God. The same passages that confuse and horrify and baffle us can, if we are paying attention, lure us closer toward God. This God has traveled with people through cloud and fire, by day and by night, since the beginning of time.

The Old Testament is a perplexing book of profound grace, hope, and beauty. It's a book of fire. To read the Old Testament is to draw close to God's love, which continues to burn away our expectations and set us ablaze. This God has traveled with people through pillars of cloud and fire, by day and by night, since the days of the exodus.

Melissa Florer-Bixler is a writer and pastor with degrees from Duke University and Princeton Theological Seminary. Her ministry at Raleigh Mennonite Church has been featured in The Atlantic and Sojourners. She writes for Geez Magazine, Christian Century, and Anabaptist World, among others. She is the author of Fire by Night: Finding God in the Pages of the Old Testament. She lives with her husband and three children in Raleigh, North Carolina.