Book Review: NLT Devotions for Lent, from the Mosaic Bible.

My thanks, once again, to Tyndale for provision of not just 1 but a whole pack of 10 copies of Devotions for Lent (Holy Bible: Mosaic) free of charge, for me to review the product.

Well, this may just about be the fastest time from receipt of item to posting the review, basically I opened the pack about an hour ago and am now ready to review.

but first a little background. Some of you may recall my review back in November, of the Mosaic Bible, the review can be read here well hot on the heels of this successful, and in my mind brilliant, product, Tyndale have now published a little booklet with devotions for lent, what I had not realised before signing up to review the product was that it is essentially the whole of the Mosaic devotional material for Lent, with nothing added and nothing taken away, in a pocket sized booklet, complete with excerpts from the relevant scripture readings for the weeks.

So what you get is a weeks worth of devotional material to use and study through the week as you see fit, the reason why I don’t need to spend too long on the material is simply because I am already doing it using My Mosaic Bible.

So, my thoughts, well obviously if, like me, you already posses a copy of the Mosaic Bible this is not worth buying, its not expensive but totally unnecessary as there is nothing that you don’t get with the mosaic bible.

That said, the material is as good as the Mosaic Bible material, I am still enjoying doing the Mosaic Devotional material  each week and this material will be no exception.

But, if you have heard about the Mosaic Bible and have been wondering whether it is the right product for you then this is an easy, and cheap, way of finding out whether you will get anything out of the Mosaic Bible, due to the very unique and different way the material is laid out I am not convinced that everyone will enjoy the Mosaic Bible as much as I have, so being able to spend £2.50 on this little booklet to find out whether you would enjoy the mosaic is an excellent option, they do packs of 10 for, available on Amazon for about £15 which is worth considering if you want to try this material with a small group or church Lent Meditations.

The scripture portions have, as you would expect, been taken from the New Living Translation, which is a huge plus to me as this is still my favourite version of the bible and I am gradually working on others in the church to try and convert them over to this particular version of the bible.

As an aside here, if you are in a Christian Bookshop some time, have a look at the bibles and compare the prices of the NLT with other translations, I think you will be shocked and surprised at how much cheaper the NLT is than some other versions, no names mentioned but the version which sells the most copies worldwide is probably just about the most expensive! This alone is one good reason to switch versions.

SO, is there much else to say? other than I love the material, well yes, in the Mosaic Bible one of the features I liked was that the scripture section, the actual bible was left unadulterated, they didn’t mix the devotional material with the scripture text, this made it clear to see what was Gods words and what was Mans words.

Well, in this booklet they have kept the same format, presumably for the same reason as above, to avoid mixing up Gods word and Mans word, in the front, the devotional material, you just find a reference, with page No’s to the scripture portions for the week, I can understand the reason for this, if it is as above, but as it is only scripture portions rather than the whole bible I would have preferred the scripture portions to have been placed in with the rest of the devotional material for the week, would have been a bit easier to use and handle, they could have differentiated scripture with different colours or different fonts, but that’s my single biggest criticism of the material.

the second criticism is the font, they have used a very small font and this couple with some of the fanct fotn styles used as part of the Mosaic trademark makes it difficult to read in places, unless my eysight is failing, which at my age is a distinct possibility, I think that they could consider giving awy magnifying glasses with this product but it might put the cost up a bit.

The other criticism I have is more  a criticism of the Tyndale organisation, they only advertised this particular product as being available for review at the beginning of Lent Week 1, and sent the product out in Lent Week 2, this is lousy timing, having now received the material, just in time to start lent week 3, if I had not been using the material already it would have been at least another week before I got My review up and published, so by the time that you, my reading audience were reading this blog post and had got yourself organised to buy the lent material it would be Easter.

It would have been so much more useful to have got the material to reviewers in time to put reviews up before Lent begun, that being said, what I will probably do is to repeat this blog post next year, just before lent, in order to give people a reminder about getting the material for lent, if I remember that is!

Anyhow, just about the shortest book review ever for me, mind you its a short little booklet so that figures!

I now have 9 copies available to give away, I am not keeping one myself but Joy has taken one, if anyone is interested in any let me know, preference will be given to anyone at our church, especially if they are thinking of using this in a Connect group, probably next year? Just get in touch and let me know how many you might want.