Easter is the high point of the year for millions of Christians around the world. And for most of them, there can be no Easter without Lent, the season that leads up to it. A time for self-denial, soul-searching, and spiritual preparation, Lent makes time for daily reading and reflection. This time-tested collection of devotions will deepen and stretch your faith, and can be returned to year after year. Culled from the wealth of twenty centuries, the selections are ecumenical in scope, representing the best classic and contemporary Christian writers. This expanded second edition adds dozens of voices, new and old, and takes the reader all the way through Eastertide to Pentecost. Includes ninety-six Lenten and Easter readings, plus seven chapter-opening poems, by Eberhard Arnold, Saint Augustine, Wendell Berry, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Day, Meister Eckhart, Khalil Gibran, Clarence Jordan, Soren Kierkegaard, Madeleine L'Engle, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Thomas Merton, Malcolm Muggeridge, Kathleen Norris, Henri Nouwen, Christina Rosetti, Fleming Rutledge, Dorothy Sayers, Edith Stein, Mother Teresa, Leo Tolstoy, N. T. Wright, Alfred Kazin, Amy Carmichael, Barbara Brown Taylor, Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, Blaise Pascal, Brennan Manning, Dag Hammarskjöld, Dorothee Soelle, Dylan Thomas, E. Stanley Jones, Emil Brunner, Frederick Buechner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Geoffrey Hill, Henry Drummond, J. Heinrich Arnold, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Johann Christoph Arnold, John Dear, John Donne, John Masefield, John Stott, John Updike, Jürgen Moltmann, Karl Barth, Madeleine L’Engle, Martin Luther, Oscar Wilde, Oswald Chambers, Paul Tillich, Peter Kreeft, Philip Berrigan, Philip Yancey, Romano Guardini, Sadhu Sundar Singh , Saint Augustine, Simone Weil, Thomas à Kempis, Toyohiko Kagawa, Walter J. Ciszek, Walter Wangerin, Watchman Nee, William Willimon and others.