David Sanford believes the moment will come for all of us when we feel as if God is no longer there. Maybe He quietly disappeared in the midst of our busy schedules; maybe He coldheartedly abandoned us with an insurmountable pile of bills or unsolved medical mysteries. Sanford's new book If God Disappears is the result of his personal "crisis of faith" and the ten years of researching, talking, and listening he has done since then.

I should mention that David Sanford is my dad, but don't think I'm promoting his book because he's family. Actually, I've heard about this book idea for the last decade and now I am so pleased with how he's condensed his experiences and conversations into a book that is at once thought-provoking and reassuring.

The tone and approach are not intimidating, much like the book's small size and short length (just 150 pages). Each of the nine chapters explores a "faith wrecker" that causes us to feel that God has disappeared (studying about God without loving him, the problem of suffering, selfish pride, and others). Each chapter ends with a related "faith builder" (reclaiming God's promises, letting God write the script for our lives, etc.) that brings us closer to feeling God's love, care, and presence.

If God Disappears contains large doses of storytelling and personal accounts of all the faith wreckers and faith builders. It is never condescending, even to those who have walked out of church and given up on God.

One of the most impactful points in the book comes at the very end, in the epilogue. Sanford relates his wonderment at how Jesus convinced the disciples to leave their families, jobs, futures, and all sense of security behind in order to follow a no-name thirty-year-old with no outlined destination or agenda. Perhaps, Sanford muses, it's because he introduced himself and then disappeared. By the time the disciples searched him out, Jesus gave the men only one option: follow me. The book ends by saying: "What if God, by his very actions, is commanding us to get more serious about following him in a whole new, radically different, risking-everything, not-sure-where-this-is-going sort of way?"

Even if you haven't had a major crisis of faith, your faith may not be as vital as you wish it were. Far from a "self-help" book, this encouraging book prompts us to move closer to God, realizing he has never left us after all.

Elizabeth Honeycutt