“66 Love Letters”, Dr Larry Crabb

I’ve always considered the Bible to be a love story. This book helps elucidate the essence of God’s love for us in each of the 66 letters of the Bible.

I loved it.

I took on a challenge to read the entire Bible during Lent just passed. Crabb’s book had been sitting on my shelf for a year or so untouched. It kinda jumped out at me as I dived into the Bible reading challenge.

As I moved quickly through the Word, what became very clear to me was God’s absolute love for us. He is madly in love with His creation, and will do anything to have us choose Him. This culminated in Jesus living, dying on the Cross and being resurrected. So working through Crabb’s love letters was a perfect fit for where my mind was at.

Certainly this is not a commentary nor concordance but doesn’t try to be that. There is definitely room for 66 Love Letters to sit alongside commentaries and such like to provide a different insight into the Word.

Not everyone is going to get it and may find it a poor cousin to more literal interpretations.

I don’t profess to know the Bible well. What this marvellous book has left me with is an insatiable thirst to know the heart of God and to better understand His love story. As Crabb says in his introduction: “We try to reach the heart of God without listening to the Word of God.” God’s revealed His heart to us, in 66 love letters.

I’m not sure how’d this book would go if you weren’t reading through the Bible simultaneously. It took Crabb 3.5 years to write it so he obviously spent a lot of time both studying the Word, other references and seeking God’s wisdom on each book. I particularly enjoyed how Crabb used other influential authors like CS Lewis to add additional insights.

The epilogue at the end will be a useful quick reference guide as it summarises each of the 66 letters into one paragraph.

Highly recommended.