These twenty-two meditations on the songs, prayers, and stories of the Bible invite readers to imagine themselves as part of a world in which human beings may fully live into their sufferings and joys as part of a vibrant while still critically searching faith in God. Here we see prophets and poets, as well as ordinary men and women, embrace the realities of life without apology or fear. Each meditation opens with the author's fresh translation of the biblical text and concludes with a prayer that seeks the critical edge of faith as an active stance toward human existence. The movement from text to commentary to prayer reflects a basic conviction that the encounter with the Bible allows persons of many cultures, whether believers or unbelievers, to engage the deepest layers of human existence today. These reflections come out of the author's search across cultures to find a common humanity before God. Since the Bible is a non-Western book in its origins and much of its present life, interpretation of that book can both confront the particularities of Western Christianity with its own limitations and offer sources of renewal for communal and individual spirituality. These reflections aim to contribute to that larger end.