I picked this book up when Christian Book Distributors was having awesome sales. It interested me because of the subject matter being spiritual formation.
This book ended up being a delightful read. It was both enlightening and challenging. I think that its easy for many spiritual formation books to all read the same or at least be similar in their format and content. Ford did a great job in creativity and his own works with this book. It was unlike other spiritual formation books that I have read. Ford cited authors who I had never heard of before, their quotes being so good that I wrote down their names to find further works by them. Some of them included: Etty Hillesum and Evagruis Ponticus.
Ford wrote in an honest format, not sidestepping hard issues within spirituality. He wrote on vocation and calling, soul shaping, our desires and how they work within us, joy and suffering, and finally resurrection. My favorite parts of the book were the chapters on suffering and joy. I found that Ford gave words to the feelings I am trying to balance at this phase in life. He spoke of the intertwining of joy and sorrow. He also wrote on the difficult time that we can have trusting in joy and good things in our lives. He writes that
Joy tests us by inviting us to be transformed by it. Most of us are deeply distrustful of the possibility of joy. There are good reasons for distrust: the yearning for joy opens us to repeated disappointments, and the world is full of deceitful or over-hyped promises of joy. To be transformed by joy means trust, even surrender and that is a massive risk.
If you want an easier read on spiritual formation, or have an interest in how God lives in the ordinary everyday life and how we can hear his whispers there - I highly recommend this book.
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