Mark Sandlin

What happens when two progressive Christian thinkers quit the branding game and start wrestling honestly with the Bible's most famous chapter?Fellow travelers. God works in mysterious ways.or sometimes God doesn't work at all. In Wonderful Words of Life? Poetic Interactions with Genesis 1, Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin and Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood invite you into a raw, daring poetic dialogue with the creation story.
Once competitors chasing the Progressive Christian spotlight, they emerged as dear friends and crafted something liberating: poems that don't just retell Genesis 1-they interrogate it. Light and darkness. Waters above and below. Dry land rising. Seeds buried alive and desperate to grow. With each "day, " familiar verses become sites of struggle, thirst, doubt, flooding questions, and defiant hope.
The poems ask what many of us whisper in silence:What is a day?Why does the water feel like drowning?Is the soil our home or our grave?This is no pious retelling. This is a poetry of creation in the key of dissension-honest, unsettling, and beautifully human. Born from their own journey out of the "Progressive Christian industrial complex, " these pages turn ancient words into a story of new creation and the uncertainties that follow.
If you love poetry that wrestles with faith rather than offering easy answers-if the beautiful words of Scripture sometimes feel like they're not quite words of life anymore-these pages may be exactly what you've been thirsting for. May the poet in us meet the poet in you.- Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin & Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood