Despite a perfectly pleasant upbringing, Graeme Cann was, by his own admission, an angry child. That is until a profound religious experience forever changed the course of his life. With a new-found purpose guiding him, Cann married his wife Julia, and together they set off on a decades-long mission of service all over Australia. Now, with two successful spiritual publications under his belt, Cann has decided to channel his love of scripture into ENCOUNTER, a book of biblical readings focusing on the life and times of Jesus Christ. As he explains in the book’s forward, the intention behind ENCOUNTER was to provide readers with a year-long journey consisting of ‘daily encounters with Jesus.’ While the ‘verse of the day’ is hardly a novel concept, Cann’s selections and prayers are surprisingly measured, offering readers subtle pearls of wisdom and points for further consideration while foregoing the heavy-handed pontification that one might expect.
Utilizing a ‘day-by-day’ format, ENCOUNTER features a spartan layout, with each page devoted to a bible verse from the New Living Translation Bible. For readers only familiar with the ‘hotel standard’ King James Version, the NLT forgoes a word-for-word translation in favor of a much more readable thought-for-thought paraphrase. For this reason, Cann’s selections will likely provide many readers with a fresh, easily understood take on many time-honored biblical stories. As the average person reads somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred words a minute, Cann is only asking for a minute a day–a small price to pay for the daily ‘lift’ ENCOUNTER provides.
Unfortunately, the visual presentation of ENCOUNTER is a bit underwhelming. Sure, the focus of any book is obviously the written content, but a visual touch of any kind (be it a watermark or some serene photographs) can go a long way to underscoring the content–especially for visual readers. ENCOUNTER, on the other hand, is as simple as it gets. To that point, given the eloquence and wisdom Cann displays in the book’s forward, it’s a shame the author didn’t choose to share more in the way of insights. While many of the selected passages speak for themselves, a more thorough explanation behind his ‘Words to Ponder’ suggestions would’ve been a great way to solidify the intent for the day’s passage or to connect it with Cann’s unique perspective. As it stands, the lack of a personal touch feels like a missed opportunity. On a positive note, Cann’s decision to align his selections with a chronological outline of Jesus’ three-year journey of ministry gives ENCOUNTER a gentle sense of momentum. The move also aids in preventing that ‘I’ve-read-this-before’ feeling that is almost impossible to avoid when constructing a daily anything.
For a man who has devoted so much of his life to others, it’s little surprise that Graeme Cann’s ENCOUNTER, a simple, understated book of daily prayers, reads like a spiritual gift some sixty years in the making.
~James Weiskittel for IndieReader