The Falling of Dusk: The 2023 Lent Book by Paul Dominiak

'Explores the seven phrases spoken by Jesus from the cross; not an easy read, but a rewarding one'
 

The Falling of Dusk: The 2023 Lent Book
By Paul Dominiak
Bloomsbury Continuum
ISBN: 9781472990471
Reviewed by: Jeannie Kendall 

 
I was first drawn to this book by its evocative title. As the introduction states, when dusk falls upon a person’s life, the words they speak gain an added significance. The book’s main chapters look at the seven phrases spoken by Jesus from the cross. However the author does so in an engaging and different way from many such reflections. He looks instead at these words through the lens of doubt – doubt which the author claims resides in these words of Jesus, and doubt to which, I think, all honest Christians will admit, especially in times of profound suffering.

The author is unafraid to embark on this task by also looking at those not normally found in the pages of a devotional book: from classic thinkers such as Nietzsche and Freud to more recent voices such as Christopher Hitchens.

This is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one, and although it is a Lent book, I think it can be read at any time of year. In the end, if we are unafraid to face our doubts they can, he argues, serve our faith rather than diminish it. These words of Jesus, spoken in extremis, are to call from us a response, which ultimately will take us on a journey not of despair, but of hope.

 

Jeannie Kendall is a retired Baptist minister, a current tutor on the Pastoral Supervision course at Spurgeon’s College, and the author of Finding Our Voice and Held in Your Bottle, with a third book Heroes or Villains? due out in July 2023