Two recently finished books both challenged and comforted in equal measure.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’ J.R.R. Tolkien

Published by the Good Book Company, which creates ‘biblical, relevant, and accessible resources for every age and context’, both these titles are quick reads – fewer than 200 pages. Yet both speak pertinently to a digital age in which we are in danger of ‘scrolling ourselves to death’.

The first, Adam Ramsay’s Faithfully Present is a book about ‘being where your feet are’, a book that suggests you check your footing.

‘You are here!’ A large red arrow points to a spot on the landscape when setting off from the car park on a long walk into unknown territory. Knowing our starting point enables us to continue successfully on our route. Then, sooner or later a small voice pipes, ‘Where are we?’ – it’s a good question. How often do I ask myself where I am. Not geographically perhaps (though I’m actually terrible at navigation) but metaphorically and spiritually on this journey through life. Where am I?

Quite often I’m in a dream world, thinking back to some past idyllic time, indulging in bittersweet nostalgic musings. At other times, I’m wistfully daydreaming about some other life I might be leading, or thinking about what the future could hold, if only…

Ramsay’s book, as the title suggests, encourages me to be ‘faithfully present’; to stop living through my phone or my fantasy world and start paying attention to the people in the room with me. Right here. Right now. He structures the book around two concepts: time and space. After all, these are where, under God, we are confined. This isn’t imprisonment; it’s liberation. We cannot be in two places at one time. So how will we live in the time and space which we are given? Chronos time marches relentlessly on waiting for no man; Kairos time offers us those rare, ripe moments of life from where expressions like ‘that was timely’ or ‘he was in the right place at the right time’ come.

Chronos asks, “How much time?”

Kairos asks, “Is it time?”

This book, quite simply, is a call to repent.

To repent of living hurried, at the speed of the world instead of the pace of the Spirt.

To repent of living busy, ever seeking to cram one more thing in because we fear missing out.

To repent of being so ruled by our to-do lists that we have turned into lousy friends.

To repent of living over-scheduled, allowing everyone except Jesus to set our calendar or define what fullness is.

To repent of living distracted, missing the life we have before us because we have been seduced by the siren song of worldly success, which promises satisfaction but will only devour us.

Mindfulness received a pretty bad press in Christian circles when Mark Williams’ book was published in 2011 but it’s not a bad place to start if you are trying to get yourself back to the present from a mental state of habitual absence.

Seth Lewis’ Dream Small issues a brave, counter-cultural invitation. To give a book such a title is to run the risk that no-one will buy it; or at least, no-one will admit to buying it. Who wants to admit that their dreams are small? Who wants to have small dreams? It depends on how you define ‘small’. As it turns out, the pursuit of God’s dreams for us, of faithful service in the ordinary encounters and activities each day presents is a pursuit that will actually satisfy bringing imperishable joy.

The highway of personal autonomy is really the path of slavery to dreams that can never keep their promises, work that can never bring lasting satisfaction, and applause with no power to grant real worth or significance.

So perhaps I am not the only one who suffers from this slavery to the fear that ‘everything you are and everything you do on this dust speck in the stars is too small and too insignificant to mean anything’.

Lewis’ short book offers a feast of seemingly indigestible delights from a forgotten menu.

Starter

Recognise how ultimately small our achievements are

Main

Recalibrate around the bigger story

Dessert

Remember our true value

It’s unpalatable surely? But very very good for us. On a time, space continuum, our achievements are almost negligible; the Creator’s story, rather than the tiny vignette of our own, is where the true adventure is to be had; and in the eyes of the One who made and redeemed us, there is total, unconditional acceptance and significance. This is not to say that our efforts, our contributions, our successes have no value at all. It is to say that they cannot offer the ultimate meaning we crave for our lives. Only in very exceptional cases will our mark remain after one or two generations.

On the other hand, we need not be unsettled by the unpredictable oversights or criticism or disdain of those who have achieved more than we have, who from a higher rung on the self made ladder of worldly success, may be looking down from their own place of fear.

We can be done with all this exhausting striving to be and to do having found the pearl of great price who out-values all else.

So, like the horse, I have been led to water once again through my reading. The questions is: Will I drink?