Favorite Quote: "What God asks of us is prodigal action—to work to love your city, to make beautiful things, and to care for the welfare of your neighbors, even if there are more 'efficient' means available. Waiting on God's work of grace, which defies our expectations as it did Jonah's, appears to be foolish. What a waste of time and energy! And yet it is precisely this resting in God's work, not our own, that challenges the spirit of autonomy" (178).
My Impressions: This was the book I didn't want to read. My first thoughts upon hearing the title were, "well I don't want to read that." I immediately had the impression that it was going to be uncomfortable. I expected this book to be more chastising than encouraging, if that makes sense. Instead, the first half of the book is written in critique of current culture, and all the ways in which it fails us. In the second half, Noble shows how belonging to God is actually freeing and life-giving. Far from feeling burdened by this book, I felt incredibly validated. Every time I opened it, I felt like I was opening the windows and letting in the breeze.
Noble opens with this observation: "We weren't made to live like this, and most of us know it. But either we don't care, or we don't think we can do anything about it. So, the mode that best describes our day-to-day experience is 'survival'…Existence is a thing to be tolerated; time is a burden to be carried" (1). While this sounds depressing, anecdotally, many of us recognize its truthfulness. And I would characterize his entire book as being both fairly depressing in its truth-telling, as well as genuinely comforting, both in the resonance I felt with the author's assessment but also the resolution that he ultimately offers.
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