EVERYDAY FAITHFULNESS by Glenna Marshall (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
Glenna Marshal, Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World. Wheaton: Crossway, 2020. 176 pages.
Last summer I killed one of the fruit trees in our backyard orchard—not on purpose, of course. I sprayed the Japanese Beetles who munched our harvest and suspect I mixed the concentration of chemicals too high. One particular nectarine tree couldn’t handle it. I had hoped for a resurrection this year, but after the tree lost its leaves in the fall, they never grew back. Now, it’s just a naked trunk and twigs. Like everything in 2020, the damage to the orchard hit harder; a late frost killed the buds on five of the seven remaining trees. Moral of the story: growing food ain’t easy.
Glenna Marshall’s new book, Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World, opens with a different but similar story, the story of a struggling gardener tending a struggling garden. Marshall confesses, “I hated the heat, the bugs, and the incessant need for weeding . . . the weeks of waiting for plants to break through the earth, grow, blossom, and then turn out vegetables.” Then she asks, “I mean, I could just drive to the grocery store and buy some tomatoes, right?” (p. 11–12).
Maybe you can relate to floundering orchards and gardens. I know I’m sympathetic to her question; it would be so much easier to buy fruit and veggies from a store.
Worth noting, however, is the way the writers of the New Testament consistently use the difficult work of farming as a metaphor for Christian spiritual growth, not in spite of the difficulties but because of them. Yes, in today’s world, we have the option to buy tomatoes and nectarines from a store, but we still can’t buy prepackaged Christian maturity. Growth in Christlikeness can’t be outsourced. But the New Testament also reminds us faithful farming reaps a reward (Galatians 6:9).
Everyday Faithfulness is Marshall’s second book. She’s a writer and pastor’s wife in Missouri, and blogs regularly. The book has an introduction and nine chapters exploring what faithfulness and perseverance look like, for example, when life is busy, we doubt God’s promises, and our hearts are cold (chapters 3, 5, and 7). Although Marshall wrote the book primarily for women, I found the book relatable, challenging, and encouraging, especially the chapter on waiting. I appreciated her repeated, simple threefold challenge to pursue God through his word, prayer, and the local church (cf. David Mathis’s book Habits of Grace). Each chapter ends with a short biographical sketch of one of Marshall’s friends who exemplifies the theme of the chapter. I thought these were a nice touch, although a few seemed too short to show the faithfulness lived out, as though we had to take Marshall’s word for it.
Throughout the book, Marshall does not hide her own struggles to follow God in daily faithfulness, whether the struggle to get up early to spend time in God’s word or to occasionally turn off Netflix at night. In one place, as she critiques the desires we all have for low-effort-but-high-yield Christianity, she writes, “I didn’t want to put down slow-growing roots; I wanted to be a chia pet” (p. 41). During one difficult season in life, she tells readers, “I didn’t pick up my Bible for months” (p. 51).
While being honest about the difficulties of daily faithfulness, the book still issues a strong call to follow the Lord, even when life is hard—perhaps especially when life is hard. In this way Everyday Faithfulness shares a similar emphasis with Kevin DeYoung’s book The Hole in our Holiness, showing that the grace of God is not just for past sins; God’s grace also produces daily perseverance. “His yoke is lighter and easier than legalistic rules and false religion,” Marshall writes, “but it doesn’t allow us to roam free from all connection to him. His yoke tethers us to him and pulls us in the direction he leads us” (p. 54). And holding fast to God teaches us the wonderful truth that God “is holding fast to us” (p. 98).
The encouragement to everyday faithfulness reminds me of the line from author Annie Dillard that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Marshall asks, “If we’re not holding on to him now, how can we be sure we’ll be holding on to him later?” (p. 52). In other words, if we want a life of faithfulness, then we must spend our days in faithfulness. Near the end of the book she writes, “Regular habits of drawing near to Christ today keep us aligned with him tomorrow. And tomorrow’s habits of drawing near to him will keep us near to him the next day” (p. 149). Amen and amen.
If God feels distant or trials abound or you can’t seem to slow down enough to hear his voice—if your Christian life feels like a leafless trunk and twigs—reading Everyday Faithfulness might provide the water, sun, and fertilizer you need to begin bearing fruit again.
* Photo by Timotheus Fröbel on Unsplash