Thursday, March 16, 2017

Prayers for a Simpler Life by Faith Sommers

I was provided this book for free by the publisher to post an honest review.

At first I was struggling with this book, her theology doesn't exactly match with my main line Methodist theology and there were some distinct areas where we parted ways, but the more I read these devotionals the more at peace I felt. Despite our vastly different lifestyles I found her devotionals useful in my own life and found myself thinking well, "we aren't so different after all are we?"

I really liked how she deferred to God for the answers to the questions we can't know the answer to, like one person is spared while another falls ill or dies. It's hard to trust God in the walk when the path is scary. It's hard to trust God to protect your loved ones when they are out in the world. But she makes a point in that only God can know God’s ways and we are not called to understand them, just trust that He will provide for our protection in His way.

Her devotion on hurrying children really hit me as just before reading that section I was speaking to someone about how slow my daughter is in the morning and how frustrating it is to me.  I had to stop an think of how impatient God could get with me. He’s been waiting more than twenty years for me to do some things.

There are so many ways she took a topic in a surprising direction leading me to say, “hmm, I never thought of it like that before.”


I nearly put the book down early on because her theology is so different than mine and I assumed she had nothing to teach me. I’m very glad I stuck with it and took away what I needed and appreciated her cultural differences. In the United Methodist Church we say we are United in Body not in thought. Which means we are all Methodists but that doesn’t mean we agree on everything. There is strength in diversity.