The Habit of Hope in a Changing and Uncertain World

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., editor of the
Canadian Evangelical Review, and an instructor of Liturgy, Anglican
Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Path Books, a recent imprint of the Anglican Book Centre, are meant to
be simple, clear, and practical books for the Christian life. William
Hockin’s book, a series of 12 meditations on hope in the face of
change, fits the pattern well. “When You Want to Run Away,” “Do
You Have to Walk on Water to be a Christian?,” and “When It’s Hard
to Forgive and Forget” are among the meditation titles. Each
meditation closes with two questions—one inviting the reader to
remember a similar situation in her or his life, and the other
encouraging the recollection of a positive experience of God in that
event. The book ends with a contemplation, “What is Heaven?” That
traditional locus of Christian hope has gone missing in such books in
recent years. Hockin pictures it in terms that speak to the longing of
21st-century people.