24th August 2025
Holiday Reading & Listening:
How then Shall We Live? - Samuel Wells
Regular attendees at the 8am service will know that I fairly often quote Sam Wells in my sermons there. Sam Wells, or to give him his full title, the Reverend Dr Samuel Wells, is the Rector of St Martin's in the Fields, and a well-known Christian writer and broadcaster. What I love about his writing and speaking is that it comes from a place of deep engagement - deep and prayerful engagement with scripture and the traditions of the Church, but also deep and prayerful engagement with the world as it is. St Martin's in the Fields, as many will know, has a very long tradition of working to support London's homeless. Sam Wells is not cloistered in an Oxbridge college - he is living out his faith every day in the complexities of real life. And it is from this perspective that he writes.
The other thing I love about Sam Wells is that he doesn't try to tell me what to think. Instead, he tells stories that broaden my imagination, that invite me to consider new possibilities, and he raises the questions I should be asking. Here where he engages with the issues that beset our church and society - issues of migration, ecology and social media, family, disability, retirement, bereavement, disappointment, assisted dying (to name but a few) - he doesn't take a black and white approach, but gives the reader signposts to help us navigate the grey areas in a way that is both faithful and wise.
This book is a collection of essays on a wide range of contemporary issues. Each one is only a few pages long - it could be read with a cup of tea - but each one, for me at least, raises questions which I ponder for hours, maybe days, afterwards. The author describes it as "written for those who find themselves in the wilderness today - a wilderness of living in a complex world, a wilderness of coping with a challenging life, a wilderness of facing the prospect of their own mortality."
Although the book deals with deep and searching questions, and takes us, at times, to places we may not risk to go, it is, fundamentally, a story of hope. Sam Wells shows us that, despite the problems that beset us, the Christian story is a story of blessings given by a faithful God, and of salvation and new hope brought by those who often - both in the past and in the present - go unnoticed. For some, it may be a book to read in full. For others, it's a book to dip into, to help inform our prayers about a situation in the news, or to help us navigate our emotions about the subjects upon which we disagree, or to help us orientate ourselves when we face something new and devastating in our personal lives.
Whenever we read our Bibles, we should be asking ourselves three questions. What was God saying to the people to whom this passage was originally addressed? What might God be saying to me today? And how, then, should I live? In helping us to think more deeply about that third question, I hope that these essays will help us continue to read the Bible better day by day.
