What a gift Dan Day’s words are to every human soul who will someday face the end of their life (i.e., all of us). His is a faith painted for us in conversation laced with candor, honesty, questions, objections, and doubt, along with comfort, assurance, and groundedness. With his writing he sets us all on a path of connecting with God about life and death in ways that are deeply real and lifegiving no matter the number of our days.

—Dorisanne Cooper
Pastor, Watts Street Baptist Church
Durham, North Carolina

In his collection of prayer, poetry, and ponderings, Reverend Day shares with us all an intensely personal and honest conversation with God about faith, death, and dying. As a physician and a teacher, I found in his words lessons on the importance of listening for memories and meaning amidst the “business” of diagnosis and treatment of disease. As a Christian, I appreciate the brave space he creates in his daily talks with God for the full range of emotions, from doubt and fear to humor and gratitude.

—Mitchell T. Heflin, MD, MHS
Durham, North Carolina

I heard the words with trepidation in 2017, “You have a terminal disease.” I immediately began reading everything I could find about dying. So far, I have continued health. How I wish I could have read Dan Day’s record of his walk with God each day as he faces death with stage 4 cancer. He is a word master with honest, challenging, poetic, testimony with profound pathos. His paragraph on Easter is worth the price of the book with his insight that we are experiencing in death and resurrection what Jesus Christ experienced! I could not put it down until it was finished.

—Larry L. McSwain
Retired Baptist educator and author of
Open and Closed Doors: Memoir of a Survivor of the SBC Unholy War

Dan Day has been a faithful guide to people and churches for decades upon decades. As he treads the verge of Jordan himself now, his prayers remain an honest and pastoral comfort for us all who will also one day have to cross the River.

—Rev. Ryon Price
Broadway Baptist Church
Fort Worth, Texas

Dan Day explores in a poignantly personal way the intersection of long years of Christian formation, thought, and ministry with the experience of what he calls “my Lazarus life.” His metaphors are both real and revelatory as they voice paradoxes of life and death, truth and trust, honesty and hope. His prayers are simultaneously patient, persistent, and penetrating.

—Paul A. Richardson, DMA, FHS
Professor Emeritus of Music
Samford University

At the River I Stand is a collection of profound prayers on death and dying. I found myself unable to stop reading Dan Day’s incomparably crafted book, except when I was surprised by sighs, smiles, tears, and laughter. As a confessional journal of faith, hope, and love by one who is in the valley of the shadow of death, At the River I Stand may well become a classic.

—Dr. Daniel Vestal
Distinguished Professor of Baptist Leadership
Director of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Center for Baptist Leadership
Mercer University

Should you find yourself in a season of life when reading the prayers of others will be the closest you can get to actually praying, then this book is for you. It takes courage to pray regardless of the unexpected circumstances life can bring, and in a phase of life when pain and suffering could easily have isolated him from God and from others, Dan has pulled back the veil to invite us into his honest conversations with God.

—Rev. Louisa Ward
Dean for Spiritual Life and Campus Minister
Campbell University

Oh, the humanity! This is one of the great gifts of Dan Day’s new book: It is based in real human experience, not theories or theologies. It is about real life and real death and the line between the two. For anyone who has ever sat in a doctor’s office or hospital bed and heard bad news, Dan offers a word of hope from the depths of his own journey. These are not trite platitudes; these are words of life from someone who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death.

—Mark Wingfield
Editor, Baptist News Global