Life from death emerging

Realistic hope

LIFE FROM DEATH EMERGING
By Paul Bradbury
Triangle SPCK 108 pages £7.99
ISBN 0 281 05458 4

I started reading this book at midnight in a 'dustbin' of an NHS A&E department, sitting next to the hospital bed of my father who died two weeks later. Maybe I was hoping for a dose of the 'it'll be all right' platitudes that some Christian books provide.

Instead I had to chew over the sort of issues that C.S. Lewis was so good at offering to the thoughtful reader. The personal story of a father coming to terms with the life-threatening illness of his first child is interwoven with spiritual reflections and hard questions. The reality of suffering is never comfortable and the author is honest in sharing his struggles and his questions and even dares to expose his anger with God.

This book is a real antidote to a triumphalism that often accompanies personal stories. It points us forward and reminds us that we live in the hope of a coming kingdom that is not immediate, not of this world. Not an easy bedtime read but a must for anyone struggling to deal with the mystery of suffering, and the reality of pain, 'that pain is a part of a positive process by which we are changed'.

Sheila M. Stephen,
Chairman of PROSPECTS, a national Christian charity that supports adults with learning difficulties

© Evangelicals Now - May 2004
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Main Articles

• To Affinity and beyond
  A new name for the British Evangelical Council
• European Union and a referendum?
• Watchers - or holy ones?
• God's new deal
  Jeremiah 31.27-37
• The techno sapiens are coming
• It began with prayer
  A brief history of the OICCU
• Letter from America
  A choice, not choices
• Monthly arts column
  Going from Barth to verse
• Monthly youth leaders column
  Putting off the old self
• The Third Degree
  Evangelism is not just for mission weeks
• The Music Exchange
  So much more than warm fuzzies
• The BBC floats with Noah - but not the biblical one!

Other articles

• Touching the void
• A house of praise: Collected hymns 1961 - 2001
• The life of Raymond Johnston
• A Diary of Revival - The outbreak of the 1904 Welsh Awakening
• Becoming
• Flight Path - A biography of Frank Barker Jnr.
• Reflections on Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ
• Body beautiful: Recovering the biblical view of the church
• In trouble and in joy
• Richard Hobson of Liverpool: The autobiography of a faithful pastor
• Deconstructing evangelicalism: Conservative Protestantism in the age of Billy Graham
• C S Lewis's Cambridge: A walking tour guide
• A history of the work of redemption
• Essential 100: Your way into the heart of the Bible
• A glorious high throne: Hebrews simply explained
• Christian perspectives on the limits of the law
• The Word became Flesh: Evangelicals and the Incarnation
• Whose land? Whose promise?
• Encountering God's Word
• Life from death emerging
• I will build my church
• Does marriage matter?