By Paul David Tripp,
Shepherd Press, £10.69
Today’s headlines – the headlines of the past months have caused many people – yes even God’s people to be dissatisfied, discouraged and disappointed.
LOST IN THE MIDDLE – although written before the present series of crises speaks powerfully to the present situation with which so many people are currently battling.
The economist’s answers to the financial markets give us little hope – the markets might go up or continue to go down. Politically there is no clear direction given to us by those who claim to be leading our country. All seem to be as lost as everyone else – agreeing that everything is now wrong and each one claiming that he knows the answer to fix what has gone wrong.
You may think that problems come with the events of life but Paul Tripp in his book brings us to see that what matters is how I respond to those problems as the child of a wise, loving and sovereign God.
Are you dissatisfied with life presently and looking back on your story
– you suddenly don’t like it and even now life seems to have no meaning? As we grow older many of the things we occupied ourselves with are no longer necessary and we seem to lose our identity.
Discouragement may set in – in our youth we lived in anticipation and with potential and now we find ourselves discouraged that those things that we wished for did not come to realization. Perhaps there is the dread of old age and death that results in worry about these aspects of life. Is there the disappointment of things you had hoped to achieve that just never seemed to happen and have you been left with unfulfilled dreams? There are regrets over many things in our lives that just didn’t happen according to how we would have liked.
Paul Tripp addresses the above Biblically; and many other issues that Midlife brings, and the stories he relates of those whose struggles are similar to ours, gives encouragement and hope to all who will face or are in the middle of the Midlife crises.
This is a book that will stir our hearts and renew our minds in the understanding of a God who, as Paul Tripp says, hasn’t left us to wander through the hallways of our own dramas. He has given us a bigger story, the story of redemption that fills Scripture’s pages. This grand story enables us not only to exegete the internal and external reality of our own stories, but more importantly, to come to know him in new and glorious ways
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I read this book during the summer months and I would thoroughly recommend it to the 35 – 60 + age group!
Dorothea Young