Last night I sat in a nearby college library, reading J.B. Phillips's classic book, Your God Is Too Small. Only 124 pages, the book took an hour to read. Phillips, an acquaintance of C.S. Lewis, wrote in the 1950s, when the effects of World War II, the developing Cold War, fears of nuclear war, and the emergence of television, air travel, and other technologies were shaping the culture.

"Many people today have not found a God big enough for modern needs," he wrote. "While their experience of life has grown in a score of directions, and their mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment … their ideas of God have remained largely static." He listed several inadequate understandings of God that he observed around him, including God as "pale Galilean" or "resident policeman" or "God-in-a-box" before describing a fuller understanding of God and his purposes in the post-war years.

In the spirit of Phillips, this year ...