Resource Library Reviews
The day is yours : slow spirituality in a fast-moving world (Ian Stackhouse) 2008
This book is a protest against the culture of speed both in the culture and large, but also, more ominously, in the church itself.
| * Book Review by Barry Owen
The sub title for the book is ‘Slow Moving Spirituality in a Fast-Moving World’ and the book does what it says on the tin. In a world where we are all jostled from this to that, either at work, or trying to fit in leisure activities that can often be more demanding than they need to be. In a world where this happens day after day without a break, Ian Stackhouse argues that we need to recover some spiritual rhythm to our lives. A rhythm to bring back some priority to work, rest, relationships, family, prayer and worship, to live attentively with God. All too often this type of book tries to suggest we have some revelatory experience that reforms our lives overnight. The author in this case is more realistic. We live in a 24/7 world where we have to change our pattern of life. Indeed Ian Stackhouse is a Pastor who has worked for the last fifteen years in the heart of London’s commuter belt, so has witnessed the pressures place on us all. He suggests different ways to look at the Psalms, prayer or the Sabbath, and even a subject that affects a third of our lives – The theology of sleep. We are encouraged to treat each new day as a gift from God, and to be passionate in the current moment, and Ian Stackhouse does this in a realistic and challenging manner and leaves the reader to put at least some of his ideas into practice. The Book Group would thoroughly recommend this book to you as a work of very practical, spiritual theology. |
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