Once Upon a Tree: Answering the Ten Crucial Questions of Life (Signature Series) [Hardcover]

Calvin Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2002

Once upon a tree...there was a Savior.

Have you seen the Cross?...Have you felt its splintered beams? Have you heard its call? Have you grasped its peculiar teachings of death and life and love and hope? Have you heard the man nailed against its rough grain call your name?

Once in a great while, a writer paints a picture with words that leave you breathless. On rare occasions, an author captures the sights, the sounds, the scandal of a premier historical event and impresses them upon your heart. Master teacher Calvin Miller has done all this and more in this signature book on the mysteries and meanings of the Crossof Christ.

If you think you have already seen the cross, heard its story, and know its meaning, this book will change your mind. It will do more than that; it will transform your life.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If Christian readers can survive the first few dark chapters of this book, a substantially revised version of a previous publication, they will be rewarded with some wonderful insights on deepening their commitment to Christ-like living. Miller, a best-selling author and Baptist professor of preaching and pastoral studies, puts the crucifixion front and center in this book, and does not shy from using vividly violent imagery to describe the bloody act. His writing is sometimes incoherent and choppy, but it improves toward the end, and its tone is always passionate and sprinkled with poetry from his personal journals. The book's unfortunately pretentious subtitle refers to what Miller labels the 10 "fearsome doctrines of our lives." These are a seemingly arbitrary list of topics: human meaning, salvation, grief, the need for community, betrayal, accountability, death and dying, self-sacrifice, pain and transcendence. Some of his best sermons come in his chapters on community (the idea that the "community of the cross" is a frontline fellowship, not a rearguard camaraderie), betrayal (we must set friends free from the necessity of being loyal just as Christ set Judas free) and dying. The crucifixion is a difficult subject to digest in book form because of its relentlessly serious nature: indeed, Miller has little patience for those who "prefer something that gently massages their narcissism with `how-to' and `fix-it' messages." His book is for evangelical Christians willing to take a difficult look at their own complacency and set it aside in favor of the lessons of the Cross.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Dr. Calvin Miller, professor of preaching and pastoral studies at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, received his D. M. from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and has served on the editorial boards of such publications as Leadership Magazine and Preaching Magazine. An accomplished author of more than forty books -- including the popular Singer trilogy, The Unchained Soul, and The Book of Jesus -- Calvin Miller brings awe-inspiring artistry to the craft of writing. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Howard Books (September 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582292574
• ISBN-13: 978-1582292571
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Calvin Miller has written over 40 books of popular theology and inspiration. A former pastor, he is professor of preaching and pastoral ministry at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. He and his wife, Joyce, have two grown children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book. A must read, October 18, 2002

By 

David Phillips "pastor" (Smyrna, DE USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Once Upon a Tree: Answering the Ten Crucial Questions of Life (Signature Series) (Hardcover)

I am a true Calvin Miller fan. I had the opportunity in London at the International Congress on Preaching to have dinner with him and at the time this review was written, he lives within 10 miles of my house.

He is in my opinion, the mystic for our time. Someone who can look beyond and go into the depths of God and then be able to communicate it to those seeking the same wonder and awe. This book is no different.

Dr. Miller looks at our life, at the heart cry of our life where we need a challenge and a touch and shows how the cross meets those challenges and needs.

For instance, in one section he talks about the Apostolic Recipe for Life. He says:
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For us a thin and needy light focuses on his cross. Like someone being wakened from a deep sleep, we ask, "What does this mean?" Oddly enough, the first to ask this question were fishermen, revenue collectors, peasants, and prosti­tutes, who had through his dying become respectable. These were the ones who wrote the Gospels-those all-inclusive biographies of Christ.

It is right that we have trusted their report. In the first century the apostles were the needy who desired to know him. Now we are the needy whose greatest need is to know him. They were the old generation of beggars who packaged the bread of salvation for our generation. We now eat from their recipe of life.

I have asked the Father that I might never forget that these who first wrote of the Cross were my brothers. They called him Lord in centuries gone by that I might call him Lord in mine. They stood at the Cross, drinking of its life. Now they crook their fingers to beckon me to a glorious altar-and there I am reborn. Now I can trade all my little reasons to live for one big one.

Those souls of old had little status. Yet they began to insist very noisily that the eighteenth year of Emperor Tiberius was history's most important-for it was the Year of the Cross. It was God's year for answering our one simple ques­tion: "Why am I on this planet?" These followers of the Christ couldn't change their minds about the truth of the Cross, and they wouldn't change the subject. They got loud and stayed loud! They shouted it from dungeon windows and prison stocks. They were buried beneath piles of stones thrown in anger. Their heads rolled. Some were crucified in their defense of the crucifixion. And to what have these martyrs (or "wit­nesses," for that is what the word martyr means) called us? Have they called us to some Sunday, cafeteria-style church where we select the worship we want to hear, then castigate others with different tastes? Have we been summoned to com­mittee quarrels where our prosaic egos lobby for control within Christ's body of believers? God forbid!

These who could not change their minds about the Cross have called us to their own private Calvary and, more important, to ours. Gradually they triumphed! Ever so slowly, as they convinced the world that the central event in time and eternity was the Cross, they bade us look with contempt on our own naive discipleship.

Pages 11-12
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Passages like that radiate throughout the book, challenging your heart and expressing to you the love of Christ.

I would really recommend it to you. I think you will love it as well.