This book is available through Amazon and is a simple and interesting read. It is sub-titled “the autobiography of a Christian’ and is exactly that. The author was a personal friend of mine many years ago and it is intriguing to read the path that he and his wife have taken in the western suburbs of London through the forty or so years since last I saw them. He is at pains to make us know that his life had been ordinary in one way, yet with God at work constantly the extraordinary has been present. It is good to trace the ways of God in a family, the blessing of God upon a home open in hospitality. The Lord took up this couple giving them a heart of love towards those that God brought their way. They have been willing to joyfully avoid the pitfalls of a mindless conformity to the values of today’s society and to live to glorify God. There is a simplicity in this book linked with a steady unfolding of God’s unchanging principles of working. Chris was born and bred in suburban London, studied at a university in that city and worked there too. Chris remembers a time when the pace of life was less frenetic and there was more opportunity given to friendships. I think this is one of the helpful lessons emerging from a reading of their story they are a couple prepared to nurture lasting friendships with the varied people that came their way. This does require time, patience, longsuffering and having your home used and sometimes misused. It is inevitable that a book like this will have elements of nostalgia as it contains reminiscences stretching back more than sixty years. It is important for those younger to look at these stones that have been set in place and ask ‘what do you mean by them’? Reminders of God’s ways with an ordinary couple who have sought to live for God through the changing decades of their lives, through the changes in the church scene as well as the social changes in the country in which they live. The pace of the book is leisurely, carrying you along and the teachable heart desiring to discern Gods ways will benefit from reading it but do not expect anything flashy and slick, but then, God is not these things is He?
