God's Abundant Grace

This was another short-ish devotional. Dwight L. Moody earned his fame in the late 1800s from his establishment of the Chicago Bible Institute, now known as the Moody Bible Institute, and from his work as an Evangelist and missionary. His writing...well, not so much.

God's Abundant Grace is a typical "popcorn" Christian book. It's easy to read, somewhat spiritually encouraging, but not terribly profound. Moody spends most of his book unfolding what the gift of grace really means. He does well with this. The last 30 or so pages of the book go through a series of interviews with Reverend Marcus Rainsford that cover the basics of Christianity.

The front jacket says that this book is the updated (1998) version. I suspect this means that they took the liberty to update his language. I've seen that before with older Christian writing. Basically, a group of people rewrites and waters down the author's original writing. While that does make the book more accessible, it also tends to dumb down the subject matter in the process. There's value in rich language; I hope nobody ever does this with C.S. Lewis's books.

This book is fine, but it's nothing revolutionary or transforming. If you come across this in a used book sale for cheap, or on the discount rack in your local Christian store, you might find it worth the few hours it will take you to read.

Rating: a hesitant 3 out of 5 stars (assuming that it lost a bit with the update)

(69/100)