I didn’t plan on buying our denomination’s Lenten devotional book this year. We’ve bought them the last couple of years and, while helpful, we are trying not to add to our possessions and I thought maybe we could do without. But I relented and bought it.

Sacred Invitation Lenten Devotions Inspired by The Book of Common Prayer promised something different than past years. The Book of Common Prayer is an old thing, and old things aren’t always that bad. I was looking forward to it.

Each day included scripture reading: morning pslam[s], evening psalm[s], Old Testament Scripture, gospel reading, epistle reading. Then a devotional tied to those scriptures (most typically to the gospel reading for the day), a series of probing questions, and a prayer. My wife and I read these aloud, me doing the reading, her listening. Mostly in the evenings, and not timely. We lost a number of days when our grandchildren were here. I think we finished it two or three weeks after Easter. We read all the scriptures for the day and the book contents for the day at a single sitting.

The book was better than past year Lenten devotionals our pub house put out, but somehow, for me, this still didn’t get the job done. I give it just three stars.  The scriptures chosen were mostly not from Holy Week, or the buildup to it. They were more anticipation scripture passages, or maybe preparation. That’s fine, I guess, as Lent is a season of preparation in anticipation of Easter.

The devotionals, I thought, were much better written than past years. Except both of the two authors seemed to go out of their way to avoid using the male pronoun for God.  If I can find an example, I’ll edit it in at this point.

What puzzled me is how this book ties in to the Book of Common Prayer. The prayers weren’t from it, the devotionals weren’t from it, the probing questions weren’t from it. I assumed the scriptures had to be.  But I think they are not. The Psalms chosen, for example, included many repetitions. As I read them I often said, “This is just about like one I read before.” When we finished the book I checked and, sure enough, many of the Pslams were repeated, one five times. I don’t expect that the Book of Common Prayer would repeat like that.

So, where does this book stand? I’m glad we read it, but it is not a keeper. It will go out to the sell/giveaway place in the garage. After four disappointing years in a row with these books, I think I will skip next year’s.