A good book that I suggest you might want to read over the summer is Mark Buchanan’s ‘Your God Is Too Safe’. The key message of the book is an encouragement not to live in the ‘borderlands’ of the Christian life. A place that appears safe and secure but lacks everything we need in terms of passion, power and freedom. Sound familiar?

As a person with quite an aversion to risk, it’s a good book for me to be reading.

But one chapter that really struck me was chapter 5, entitled ‘Whatever happened to wonder?’  In it, the author suggests that modern society’s obsession with technology has robbed us of our capacity to wonder or imagine in a normal way. So, instead of watching an eclipse outside, we look at it on our TVs. Instead of gazing at the night sky, we play futuristic computer games that offer a poor replica. Which of course got me thinking a bit, given my dabbling in the occasional online computer game.

Has this technological substitute really robbed me of my imagination and creativity? Worse still, does this loss of wonder leech over into my spiritual and Christian life? Do I end up unmoved by the glories and the mysteries of the death and resurrection of Christ or of the eternal kingdom to come? Am I more excited to raise my avatar by one level to be slightly better equipped to fight a load of pixelated orcs than I am to worship my Lord and Saviour? Have I, to coin the words of the great CS Lewis, become content to replace glorious sandcastles with sad little mud pies?

Plenty to challenge me and hopefully you as well. Add this one to your holiday reading list this summer and you never know where you might end up.


Your God Is Too Safe 
Mark Buchanan, pub Multnomah Press (4 Mar 2006)
ISBN-10: 1576737748
ISBN-13: 978-1576737743