Reviewed by Alan Sears

Christians often refer to Jesus as the master teacher and in light of that it is always somewhat surprising to me how ‘un-Jesus like’ much contemporary Christian teaching is. Such teaching often resembles the worst university or school lectures; reducing complex ideas and truths to two or three supposedly clear points presented in a way that is almost completely detached from any focus on what living in the world is really like. They are lessons for the head rather than the whole person and listeners are almost never invited to make their own meaning or figure out their own way of integrating the truths into their daily lives. What really strikes me as missing are the stories that were such a central part of Jesus’ teaching style.

Retired Anglican Bishop Bill Hockin, however, has obviously learned from the master teacher. His series of 23 short devotionals covering the Christian year published under the title God for a Monday Morning is chalk-full of stories. We stand with people in line at the bank or grocery store; meet the young curate whose critical flaw is always having to be right; feel the pain of the cancer patient who asks, “why me?”; or grieve along with the parents whose son is in with the wrong crowd and in trouble with the law. Hockin’s tales sweep us up into the struggle to understand how God works in the world and what he intends for us. Hockin uses these stories to illustrate how spiritual truths work themselves out in real lives in the contemporary world, in lives lived more in the world of Monday morning and the rest of the week than in worship services on Sunday.

These devotionals and the stories that permeate them work effectively on several levels. First, they connect ancient stories and truths to quite ordinary, contemporary contexts. In the devotional titled ‘A Hittite is Just a Hittite,’ for example, Hockin draws on themes from the prophet Isaiah and the stories of Joshua at the edge of the Promised Land about the people of Israel feeling alone, faced with insurmountable odds, and abandoned by God; feelings not uncommon to our experience. “What we have here,” Hockin writes, “is a familiar situation that you and I know all too well.”

Second, like the familiar quip, these devotionals both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Consistent themes throughout these pieces are that God holds all people to be of inestimable worth; that he consistently and faithfully reaches out to us all; and is always willing to come alongside to heal, forgive and restore. Several years ago Christian writer Philip Yancey wrote a book titled, Where is God When it Hurts? Bill Hockin’s devotionals shout the answer, “Right beside you! Loving you wherever you are, whatever you have done!”

But these devotionals don’t just leave us there in God’s loving arms. They also challenge us to respond, to move out into life with a new perspective, God’s perspective, on the world and our place in it. Throughout Hockin raises questions we have to answer: “What side of the cross am I on?” Will we choose to follow a God of our own creation or the God of creation? Or, which crowd will we join; the crowd around Jesus focused on life or the crowed “characterized by negativity and hopelessness?” Hockin doesn’t answer for us; rather he challenges us to work through our own relationship with God and his world.

Third, these devotionals respect the autonomy of the reader. Jesus’ parables and stories were often open-ended and not always, in fact hardly ever, clear. He largely left his listeners to struggle with meaning and the implications for their own lives. Good teachers know that in the long term this is a wise educational strategy. It invites the learner to make meaning at a number of levels and to work out the implications of that meaning in their own lives. Infusing his work with stories and questions, Hockin does the same: he invites us all to consider how the ideas and truths he explores connect to our own circumstances and to act on what we discover.

Finally, these devotionals are rich with what John Stott calls “double listening: listening to the Word and listening to the world.” Hockin has a keen appreciation of how our world is permeated by elements of modern and post-modern world views. Perspectives that tell us we are autonomous, we can achieve anything and everything on our own, and we alone determine what is true or right for us. Perspectives that, despite their underlying self-assurance, often leave us feeling powerless and alone. Over and over again, Hockin challenges those views. He wants us to know, more than anything else, that “there is more than desert in our lives. There is something else. There is someone else.”