Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints from Every Era and Place

Surrounded by a Cloud of Witnesses

Do you ever feel like you're alone in your struggles to live out the Christian faith? Do you ever read the Bible yet still wonder what it looks like to follow Jesus in the complexity and difficulty of our time?

The stories of great men and women throughout the history of the church can help us form a bridge between the teaching of Scripture and our embodied lives. This illustrated devotional vividly depicts the lives and words of great women and men of faith. Artist Ben Lansing and Anglican priest D. J. Marotta offer fifty-two profound images and reflections on Christians, from Polycarp in the first century to the martyrs of Sudan in the twenty-first century. These saints, from every continent and century of church history, demonstrate the historic church's relevance for Christians today and reveals God's faithfulness in all times and circumstances.

The artwork, biographies, devotionals, and prayers in this book are meant to spark our imaginations, helping us to be faithful here and now, in our own age.

Ben Lansing is an artist from Richmond, Virginia, and the creator of the online art series Our Church Speaks. He is an Anglican deacon and a lifelong student of the history of art and religion. He loves sharing the history of the global church through art and storytelling. He lives in Richmond with his wife, Bethany, in a house full of books.

D. J. Marotta is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America and the founding rector of Redeemer Anglican Church in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord's Prayer Shapes the Imagination of the Church in a Secular Age. His wife is gracious and his children are clever.