While the collection of stories offers anecdotes about the Christian meaning of life in the midst of suffering and pain, Arnold gives us lessons on the importance of the virtue of courage. The life of faith, he rightly insists, isn't lived without doubt, but precisely in the midst of doubt. The struggle through pain in the way of the Cross.
I was particularly moved by chapter 1, "Searching", in which Arnold recounts the story of Sybil and God's pursuit of her, even in her atheism. From her early rejection of God to the hell of drug use and prostitution she spiraled down into, all the while God is pursuing her -- in her own heart's desire for God. After her experience at a Christian retreat center, where the retreat leader read aloud the same passages from Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov that had caused her to question God in the first place, she "embraces a new thought: it is not God who torments the innocent. It is Sybil".
Those few lines took my breath.
And Arnold rightly concludes that all of Sybil's rebellion was itself a prayer -- a prayer that God finally answers.
Whether it's the story of a mother's pain at the loss of a child, or the hopelessness of a drug dealer languishing in prison, or the pain of a woman whose family has fallen apart, Arnold is slowly speaking the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: That God has not left us alone in the midst of our pain and doubt. God is with us.
That's the mystery of the Gospel. But it's also the truth of the Gospel. And ultimately that truth is the hope embodied in each of these stories.
This is a book for every soul that feels tormented, and one that will remain on my shelf to share again and again in the Church.
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I received a free copy of this book from Plough Publishing in exchange for my honest review here.