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Twenty-four

Integrating faith and real life

Airport sandwich

TWENTY-FOUR
Integrating faith and real life
By Krish Kandiah
Authentic Media. 176 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978-1-85078-802-7

This book sets out to challenge Christians who, outside of church meetings and Christian activities, live as ‘practical atheists’. You don’t need to watch the TV series 24 to understand its contents. Krish Kandiah looks at getting up, commuting, work, shopping, cooking, family, fun, exercise and sleep, and asks how we can redeem each of these everyday activities to bring glory to God twenty-four hours a day.

Each chapter consists of a series of reflections on loosely-related Bible themes. So, the chapter on cooking includes, among other things, the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden, the Lord’s prayer, the Levitical sacrifices, the gospel accounts of Jesus eating with sinners, and a section on fasting.

On the plus side, the book is readable and does what it sets out to do. The Just a minute sections at the end of each chapter contain ideas for applying the teaching and a number of thought-provoking points.

However, the topical approach means, confusingly for some, a lot of skipping around the Bible. And where each chapter ends with suggestions (questions to think about, music to listen to and books to read), sadly, investigating the Bible for yourself has been omitted. Then there’s little mention of church, apart from one section in the chapter on family, although the New Testament shows that church is also to be 24/7.

Ultimately, Twenty-four’s pleasant even tone felt rather bland, like an airport sandwich that I recently ate — it probably contained some nutrition but I didn’t want another one. I wonder if other books may better achieve this book’s aims, by totally thrilling my heart with God’s glory and the wonder of the gospel. If, as the author says, on average we only have 600,000 hours of life, I’m not sure that Twenty-four is a must-read.

Anne Woodcock,
Fairfield Community Church, Kingston upon Thames