Earlier this year, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism, MennoMedia published the Anabap­tist Community Bible. Not a new translation, this was rather an experiment in communal hermeneutics, putting scripture into conversation with scholarly commentary, ancestral voices and the insights of thousands of readers in study groups. To supplement this endeavor, MennoMedia is releasing a suite of additional books, including a collection of devotional art and poetry, Drawing Near.

Drawing Near has a satisfying geom­etry. Forty illustrations — the same 40 commissioned for the Anabaptist Community Bible — slot into eight thematic clusters of five chapters each. Each chapter adheres to a quadri­partite formula: first a scripture passage, then the art, then a poem about the art and finally, questions to ponder. This is a solid, predictable and reassuring structure. Good bones.

The inhabitants of this architecture — the images, the poems, the questions — are less predictable. Like some kind of lavish wisteria overrunning a suburban pergola, they follow the outline only to swoop aside in spurts of surprise and whimsy, all unexpected angles and swirling spontaneity, following the urgings of sun on chlorophyll and the logic of vines. This is art. Some parts you will love more than others. Some hew close to the text, some don’t. In her introduction, Julia Spicher Kasdorf fittingly points out that “anthology” means “bouquet.”

Because this is a devotional book, each chapter is designed to be read and pondered separately, perhaps over 40 days or 40 weeks. While this is a fine approach, I found satisfaction ingesting a full thematic section at a time. “Part 3: Forgiveness, Memory and Transformation,” for instance, includes the stories of Esau and Jacob (Genesis 33), Samuel at Mizpah (1 Samuel 7), the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), the Emmaus Road travelers (Luke 24) and Lydia (Acts 16). Together they form a marvelous mini-bouquet that I never would have assembled on my own.

Drawing Near is a good book for those who dislike the tyranny of left-to-right. Though it starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation, you can take the chapters in any order. The main thing is to allow plenty of time: to read, to reflect, to enjoy.

Devotion is generally an individual discipline, but since this is a companion to the Anabaptist Community Bible, I can imagine engaging it through Bible studies, Sunday school classes and other group settings. Could it serve as a 40-week Sunday school series? You will need a group that is open to contemplation, ambiguity and the challenge of attempting their own drawings and poems. 

Will you like the artwork? Five artists created images in “linocut style.” There is no color, presumably for reasons of thrift, and the result is a black-bumper aesthetic that some may find dour. This, at least, was my initial reaction, and if you feel the same way I urge you to give it a chance. Close looking, like close reading, rewards the effort. In these illustrations, many surprising things happen with flowers and birds. “God’s Presence” (Randy Horst) is heart-melting. Sarah Fuller, I’m still trying to figure out the hawk you placed near Lydia.

Forty poems were commissioned to accompany these images. Some, like Esther Yoder Stenson’s “Flowing,” describe the art closely; others, like “Except One” by Leonard Nolt, follow an idea that leads outward from it. Becca Lachman wrote a poem to fit the meter of “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need.” The styles vary widely — a bouquet is an anthology, after all — but each poem is thoughtful, serious, carefully crafted. I have favorites, and you will, too. Taken together, these illustrations and poems do the work of good art: to help us see with new eyes, making the familiar freshly unfamiliar. They delight and instruct and invite sacred reflection.

There are ironies to this book. Early Anabaptists distrusted religious art, yet here we are, commemorating their legacy with devotional imagery. Along with iconoclasm, nonresistance is apparently also out, with Part 4 dedicated to the theme of “Resistance” through the stories of Shiphrah and Puah, Rahab, Deborah, Esther and the Beatitudes. Five centuries on, how do we feel about this?

Alert readers will notice that Draw­ing Near was printed at a facility owned by a family with connections to Metamora Mennonite Church in Illinois, and the congregation contributed to the costs. Thank you, friends! Perhaps some others of us will follow your example. 

J. Roger Kurtz is a member of Zion Mennonite Church in Souderton, Pa. He heads the Depart­ment of English and Philosophy at Drexel University.