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Seeing in the Dark: Finding God's Light in the Most Unexpected Places

Review

Seeing in the Dark: Finding God's Light in the Most Unexpected Places

Nancy Ortberg is the director of leadership development at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Northern California and the author of a number of books on living the Christian life and leadership. In her newest work, she offers readers 15 poignantly presented stories of real time people who have found the strength and solace of God in unexpected moments, times and places.

Ortberg has a nifty way of sharing some of life’s toughest happenings and helping Christ followers find the light, dim though it may be, hidden amongst the darkness. While a fine leader who trains others to lead well, she admits to finding herself lost at times when tragedy strikes hardest and is herself in need of a guiding hand to help gain back her bearings. As all parents have experienced, when one’s child is struck by some painfully impossible situation and is struggling to overcome, moms and dads feel the weight of their offspring’s sufferings more keenly than their own.

"Ortberg’s life is a testimony to God’s enduring faithfulness, and her mode of communicating that unfailing love will hearten even the most disheartened individual."

Ortberg relates a personal story when this happened, and she needed a friend to sit her down and gently guide her back to the Savior where she found her strength, made her peace, and gained renewed heart to keep pressing through. Later, after her child had soldiered through the crisis, she recalled how much she learned from being in that dark place near her loved one. Many of the accounts Ortberg so skillfully lays out in a comfortable, homespun, conversational style surround her own life, family and ministry. Her transparency covers the gamut of life situations, and readers will find themselves smiling, grimacing and emotionally engaged as they realize that everyone battles through this life.

Another story that is especially riveting is Ortberg’s account of her move from California to Chicago and how difficult that transition was for her. She tells readers that she simply couldn’t find God in that harsh, cold environment for seasons. It was so painful for her as a lifelong Californian to find God in the Midwest that she refused to even buy a winter coat for the first two years there. And yet, she notes that the darkness did eventually lift, and they discovered years of fruitful ministry in that city.

Readers will discover afresh how God always finds a way to pierce even the darkest night of the soul with His redeeming presence and grace. Ortberg specifically helps Christians see the light when death occurs, disease takes hold, children suffer, depression oppresses, and simple discouragement from life’s hard knocks threaten to overtake faith, hope and love. Ortberg’s life is a testimony to God’s enduring faithfulness, and her mode of communicating that unfailing love will hearten even the most disheartened individual. SEEING IN THE DARK is a terrific book to buy and refer back to as needed, as well as one to give to a friend.

Reviewed by Michele Howe on June 22, 2015

Seeing in the Dark: Finding God's Light in the Most Unexpected Places
by Nancy Ortberg