Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World
by Michael S. Horton
What if following Jesus with radical abandonment meant staying in a small town, loving the people in front of you, raising babies to love the Lord Jesus, and dying unknown to the world and with no discernible impact beyond your immediate circle of family and friends? What if the cross Jesus calls you to bear is to sacrifice your ambition and your restless chasing of The Next Big Thing and instead give attention to ordinary means of grace, designed by Christ’s appointment to make you fit for resurrection life begun now and culminating in the new heaven and earth?
Horton lays down a welcome challenge to a fascination with the superlative, an obsession with metrics, a selling out to marketing that seeks to draw us away from what God has ordained to form us into the image of his Son. What is needed by confused teens, exhausted parents, discouraged elders, and anxious singles? Is it not the Word, sacraments, and prayer? What if the Lord’s Supper will do more for you than ticking off the boxes of the conference circuit and following the latest evangelical fad? What if loving the neighbor next door is harder than loving kids in an African slum? What if God transforms the world through the catechesis of the young and the slow growth in grace of generations who sit under preaching together and unite their voices in prayer and praise?
What if the better way to take back our faith from the American Dream is to delight in the ordinary and everyday, to revel in Sabbath rest, and to pursue our vocations and raise our families to the glory of God?
