If you’d like to know more about the strengths and gifts of the different Christian denominations, I am slowly savoring an amazing book. It is “Streams of Living Water” about celebrating the great traditions of Christian faith. It’s by Richard J. Foster. It’s a thick book packed with Scripture based insight and an appreciation for the various parts of the broken Body of Christ. It also warns of the distortions that we fallible humans fall into in all of them. I so wish I had read this book when I was searching for God after becoming disillusion with religion. Even with my less knowledgeable understanding when I studied the major religions, I did see that each was protecting and polishing certain aspects of Christianity, but blind to others equally important. I finally found the love of God fleshed out in Jesus through friends who had given up an affluent life to work with Campus Crusade for Christ, a non-denominational organization leading people into a personal relationship with Jesus, not a particular denomination. This book simply overflows with the love of God through each approach to Christianity. It also alerts us to the dangers of being blind to other aspects of the love of God described in the Scriptures and lived out in Jesus. We are imperfect humans with different personalities that have different strengths and weaknesses. We need each other’s insights and ways of responding to God for balance, for wholeness, for holiness. This isn’t a quick read. It takes thought and at least a slightly open mind that doesn’t limit Christianity to either/or. There are riches to be discovered in each chapter about each tradition. Today’s chapter opened me to new insights and at one point while sitting outside reading it, closing the book and feeling totally immersed in the tender, overwhelming, Love of God.