Introduction

Section 1: Invitation ; The ballad of reading Gaol / Oscar Wilde ; Not all right / Tish Harrison Warren ; Repent / William H. Willimon ; In mirrors / Walter Wangerin ; Living Lent / Barbara Cawthorne Crafton ; Time for reflection / Howard Thurman ; Surrender is everything / Jean-Pierre de Caussade ; The relinquished life / Oswald Chambers ; The royal road / Thomas à Kempis ; To know the cross / Thomas Merton ; Discipleship and the cross / Dietrich Bonhoeffer ; Followers, not admirers / Søren Kierkegaard ; The center / J. Heinrich Arnold

Section 2: Temptation ; Lachrimae Amantis / Geoffrey Hill ; Keeping watch / Philip Berrigan ; Too good for Jesus / Fleming Rutledge ; The divine scandal / Emil Brunner ; Truth to tell / Barbara Brown Taylor ; They took my Lord away / John Donne ; Remember her love / Alastair Roberts ; Merchandising truth / Meister Eckhart ; Sheath your sword / John Dear ; Believing is seeing / Romano Guardini ; Turning / Henry Drummond ; The crucified / Kahlil Gibran

Section III: Passion ; Beneath Thy cross / Christina Rossetti ; The mystery of Jesus / Blaise Pascal ; Forsaken by God / Jürgen Moltmann ; A father's grief / Martin Luther ; Shared hells / Peter Kreeft ; For the sacrificed / Dag Hammarskjöld ; God the rebel / G.K. Chesterton ; Thy will be done / Edith Stein ; Still bleeding / Wendell Berry ; Freedom and love / Juan Mateos ; From action to passion / Henri J.M. Nouwen ; I thirst for you / Joseph Langford

Section IV: Crucifixion ; This bread I break / Dylan Thomas ; Our mediator / Augustine of Hippo ; The criminal's faith / Johann Ernst von Holst ; The image of God crucified / Elsa Támez ; The distance / Simone Weil ; God on the cross / John Stott ; The temptation of Palm Sunday / William Stringfellow ; Life in the blood / Toyohiko Kagawa ; O sacred head, now wounded / Erik Varden ; It is done / Watchman Nee ; The Father's hands / George MacDonald ; A cosmic cross / Paul Tillich ; The path from death to life / Kurt Koch

Section V: Resurrection ; Seven Stanzas at Easter / John Updike ; Today I rise / Gregory of Nazianzus ; The strangest story of all / C.S. Lewis ; What difference does Easter make? / Marilyn Lacey ; Impending resurrection / Malcolm Muggeridge ; The end is life / Frederick Buechner ; The greatest drama / Dorothy Sayers ; Threatened by resurrection / Karl Barth ; Fear not / Walter J. Ciszek ; Waiting for Judas / Madeleine L'Engle ; The mystery of the poor / Dorothy Day ; Jesus' hands / Philip Yancey ; The tomb is empty / Catherine de Hueck Doherty ; Christ rising / Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt ; The future resurrection / Clement of Rome

Section VI: New Life ; The everlasting mercy / John Masefield ; I, like the thief / Leo Tolstoy ; Redemption / Fyodor Dostoyevsky ; I had been waiting / Alfred Kazin ; The Christ of experience / E. Stanley Jones ; Calvary love / Amy Carmichael ; The power of forgiveness / Johann Christoph Arnold ; The feast of freedom / Jürgen Moltmann ; The last word / Clarence Jordan ; Jesus gives all / Henri J.M. Nouwen ; To make all things well / Julian of Norwich ; A new world / N.T. Wright ; The sword and the cross / Gonzalo Báez Camargo ; The signature of Jesus / Brennan Manning ; Why we rejoice / John Chrysostom ; The great physician / Sadhu Sundar Singh ; Monday Christians / Hannah Whitall Smith ; Lift up your heads! / Jakob Hutter ; Love alone repays love / Thérèse of Lisieux

Section VII: Pentecost ; Pentecost / Malcolm Guite ; God's new language / Stanley Hauerwas ; Ransom for captives / Cyril of Jerusalem ; Following the Spirit's call / Sojourner Truth ; Love of neighbor / Gerhard Lohfink ; In the world, but not of it / Letter to Diognetus ; Counting the cost / Early Hutterite ; I will come again / Edward Shillito ; When the Lord Ascends / Adrienne von Speyr ; Peace that shatters evil / Ignatius of Antioch ; Grafted into Christ / Peter Riedemann ; The church I dreamed of / Kwon Jeong-saeng ; One in three / Hildegard of Bingen ; The great floodtide / Johann Christoph Blumhardt ; See how they love one another / Tertullian ; Daily martyrdom / Archbishop Angaelos ; The fearful become faithful / Shūsaku Endō ; Waiting with Mary / Kathleen Mulhern ; One heart and mind / Eberhard Arnold

Sources and acknowledgements

Index of authors.