I sat down with Melissa Florer-Bixler to talk her new book Fire By Night: finding God in the pages of the Old Testament. This is an exceptional, exciting, and accessible work, drawing us into the nuance, beauty, and challenge of the OT in order to draw us deeper into the life of God. We talk about reading slowly, how difficult texts often reveal parts of ourselves we’d rather turn away from, holiness, justice, Sodom and Gomorrah, and how the Mennonite practice of testimony fits well with the nature of debate and conversation within the pages of the OT. Also, we recorded this a day after the Oscars, so we talk about our desire for a Jael movie. Listen in iTunes // Watch on YouTube

This is a special episode, co-presented with Insights, the magazine of the Uniting Church in Australia Synod of NSW/ACT.

“From page to page, chapter to chapter, book to book, we encounter the human and divine in the same verse, the same ink, as one bleeds into the other.”