BOOK CORNER

For May my book is a new one and by an author of whom I am not familiar. Finding God in Unexpected Places by Philip Yancey.

The author encourages us to look for God beyond the walls of our Churches and Cathedrals. He cites Jesus as being a master at finding God in unexpected places, for example, in the widow who had only two mites and in the tax collector disliked by all.

The book is divided into six sections: -

Finding God without really looking
Finding God on the job
Finding God in a fractured society
Finding God among the headlines
Finding God in the cracks
Finding God within the Church

Within those sections are variously titled chapters. In the first section under the title 'Looking Up' the author describes how he had visited a refugee camp in Somalia interviewing relief workers and seeing first hand the misery and suffering there. After three days he could not lift his sights above that refugee camp... "until I saw the Milky Way. It abruptly reminded me that the present moment did not comprise all of life. History would go on. Tribes, governments, and whole civilisations may rise and fall, trailing disaster in their wake, but I dared not confine my vision to the scenes of suffering around me. I needed to look up, to the stars."

In 'The Walls Came Tumbling Down' (Finding God among the headlines) the moving account of how the Berlin Wall was brought down is related. Despite both the army and the police being given strict instructions to shoot any demonstrators, the government was brought down peaceably and with no loss of life.

'Do Not Forget to Laugh' (Finding God in Church) revealed an interesting comparison between laughter and prayer. Philip Yancey feels that in both acts we acknowledge our creatureliness and take ourselves less seriously: -

"Work divides and ranks; laughter and prayer unite".

Finding God in Unexpected Places by Philip Yancey (Hodder and Stoughton), ISBN 0340786043. £6.99.

Lynn Winter