PsalterMark

Publication of The Penitential Psalms: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Seven Psalms is imminent. So now seems like a good time to reveal its cover.

The cover was designed by Savanah N. Landerholm of Wipf & Stock. The cover photograph is of Roger Wagner’s The Flowering Tree, a stained-glass window installed in St. Mary’s Church, Iffley (Oxfordshire, UK), and is used with kind permission of the artist.

For more information on this remarkable stained glass window click here. This image is appropriate for a variety of reasons on the cover of a book on the Penitential Psalms, not least because a Christian penitential reading of Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143 as a group necessitates a Christological lens. The book which bears this cover can in one sense be seen as a sustained reflection on the Western tradition’s Christological reception of these seven psalms from Augustine via Cassiodorus, Alcuin, Rolle, Maidstone, Hull, Fisher, Luther, Donne, Spurgeon and Bonhoeffer. Some painful and pragmatic choices had to be made on who was included and omitted in this account of the rise and fall of the seven psalms.

The cover is also a helpful reminder that the Penitential Psalms, though concerned with the consequences of sin, don’t stay in that dark place but are a means to grace and new life.