Karen Wright Marsh has a true gift for making historical figures stand up and walk off the page with encouragement to wake up, reach out, go deep, and dwell in amazement. Wake Up to Wonder features 22 vignettes drawn from the lives of saints who accepted God’s invitation to wonder. As our older brothers and sisters, their lives and their examples mentor us in spiritual practices that provide solid footing in unsettling times.

I was delighted to encounter fresh thoughts on familiar friends like Saint Patrick and Brother Lawrence and intrigued to make the acquaintance of (to me) more obscure names including Margery Kempe, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Ephrem the Syriac. The story of each guide is followed by suggested spiritual practices that beckon the reader to go “further up and further in” with Christ. If you have a journal, keep it handy because you will want to record significant quotes from the wealth of wisdom collected in these pages.

The book is well-named for a generation of believers who have been lulled to sleep by comfort and entertainment and who need to wake up to the wonder that we live every moment in the presence of the miraculous. We enjoy God’s unwavering attention! May I never cease to live in wonder!

Many thanks to the Brazos Press and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.

There is a joke that talks about the three types of people in this world. The first type waits for things to happen. The second type makes things happen. The third type wonders what happened. The first type is the slacker. The second type is the planner. The third type is the ignorant. From a project management perspective, the joke is a fun way to inject urgency into the team. This book does not deal with project management per se. It is about discerning the exercise of faith, the relevance of hope, and the power of love. It might even encourage us to be the fourth type of person, a wakeful person in discernment about a time to wait, a time to work, and also a time to wonder. Instead of going it alone, author Karen Wright Marsh collects wisdom from 22 different sources of spiritual leaders on discernment. From Henri Nouwen, we learn how a man trapped in the cycle of busyness was able to discern his own identity through writing and conscientious reflection. Martin Luther reminds us of the gift of music to learn to sing our faith out loud. Thomas Merton's life of contemplation teaches us about cultivating prayer to become as natural as breathing. Hildegard Von Bingen points us toward personal healthcare to bring the body and soul to be in harmony. That involves deliberate food choices and health awareness. Margery Kempe shows us the simplicity of journeying spiritually by walking and thinking. Wangari Maathai expresses her faith through awareness of the stewardship of earthly resources to grow trees of both nature and faith. Caedmon invites us into a world of gratitude while Amanda Berry Smith shares about passionate prayer that is not shy about pouring out emotions and questions to God. Augustine's work and life demonstrate the power of confessions and confidence in God. Lilas Trotter wakes us up to wonder about artistry both within and without. Fannie Lou Hamer defends the weak and uses music to sing about salvation, redemption, and struggle. Patrick of Ireland helps us to embrace aloneness without guilt. Hans and Sophie Scholl caution us about evil indoctrination in an Information-loaded environment. Howard Thurman highlights stillness as an opportunity for renewal and fresh courage. Pandita Ramabai lives through various struggles of injustice and finds much solace in Scripture. Ephrem the Syrian surprises with a fresh look at the beauty that resembles hope even as we live through a world peppered with pain and loss. Ignatius of Loyola guides us through the daily examen. Benedict and Scholastica frame a disciplined way for us to work through the week. Brother Lawrence mentors us through intentional work and prayer. Francis of Assisi and Clare of Assisi reveal unique callings of God to us, sometimes in ways that are different from conventional thinking. Dorothy Day directs us toward balancing work, life, worship, and rest. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee's life is an expose to the unexpected ways God raises leaders.

My Thoughts
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One of the ills of modern society is the rush to busyness. We are always busy doing something. If we are not busy, we will find something to busy ourselves with. This is symptomatic of a restless soul and an anxious heart. In a society that is never satisfied, people gravitate to many activities in order to feel fulfilled. Like drinking and eating that only satisfy us momentarily, we live from one meal to another, from one project to another, and from one program to another. We switch channels on TV when bored. We browse different websites to kill time. We flip social media pages searching in vain for something to satisfy our inner cravings. What if the answer is not outside but inside? This book shows us wonderful things we can learn about ourselves as we wake up to the undiscovered longings in our inner beings. Author Karen Marsh reminds us about our inner inclinations toward stories. By giving us 22 stories about people in the past and present, we learn to write our own stories. Thus, this is a book about stories that speak to us when we take time to ponder and wonder. I am sure Marsh could have talked about many other people but curiously selected 22 unique individuals, some of whom I have not heard of. I wonder about what criteria Marsh uses to choose these people. Her five orientations will help us understand. It begins with "Wake Up" where Marsh helps us see the extraordinary in the midst of ordinary people in ordinary circumstances. This is perhaps the most important step for any busy person. If one can take time to ponder, it would have given any fatigued soul some space to breathe. "Reach Out" goes beyond the wakefulness to be conscious of the things and people around us. In a technology-full world, we have lost the art of stillness. Only in moments of stillness can we "Go Deep." Only when we learn about deepening our understanding can we appreciate the importance of growing a relationship with God as well as with fellow people. There is no quality time without quantity time. Hopefully, we can cultivate a lifestyle of work, rest, and play in order not to let the unhealthy spirit of busyness control us.

Thanks to Marsh, we have a resource to give us at least 22 illustrations of how to rest, find ourselves, and to be able to look beyond our own needs toward others. There are many lessons we can pick up in this book. The exercises at the end of each invitation can spur us to put the call to wake up to wonder into practice.

Karen Wright Marsh is the founding director of Theological Horizons, a ministry at the University of Virginia that hosts lectures, spiritual studies, dialogues, and mentoring initiatives. She is the author of Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith, which was named an Outreach Resource of the Year, a Logos Booksellers Book of the Year, and a Foreword INDIES finalist. Karen holds a degree in philosophy from Wheaton College and a degree in linguistics from the University of Virginia. She lives with her professor husband, Charles Marsh, at the Bonhoeffer House in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Rating: 4.25 stars out of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Brazos Press via NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

Reading ‘Wake Up to Wonder’ was a delight. Karen Wright Marsh writes with a charming, gentle style. The book is easy to read and thoughtful, while still being thoroughly practical. The book is based on the concept of finding people to follow, instead of a perfect plan. I love the idea. By sharing people’s stories, this book inspires without guilt-tripping. Some of the people Karen Wright Marsh chose are very well known, while others I had never heard about before. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to grow as a Christ follower.

This a beautiful book that is meant to be savord and applied. Each chapter details a faith practice you can use and a person from history who used it on their Christian walk. I appreciated all the examples from history she uses both from distant history and contemporary. This book would be great to read a chapter a week or month and apply the teaching and practice to your life. Each chapter has helpful tips and questions for how you can use the practice.

Wow, this book left me speechless and blew me away in the best possible way. The heart of this book is to provide spiritual brothers and sisters (most long gone), who all faced their own challenges but still held on to their faith and lived life in God's presence. Karen Wright Marsh spends each chapter describing important points in a specific person's life, connects each of them with experience in her own life, and ends each chapter with practical ways to practice different facets of spirituality that each of these individuals held on to. While there were some "big name" Christians like Augustine and Martin Luther, I saw them in a completely new light (Martin Luther's chapter was a favorite of mine and is all about his love and ministry of music). There were also many people I'd never heard of or didn't know much about, and I bought biographies for a few of them to learn more. This book is part biography collection, part spiritual memoir, and part therapy journal. After reading it, I felt deeply encouraged and full.

Thank you to Netgalley and Brazos Press for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The cover is what grabbed my eye. Short devotional like chapters that showcase interesting people of faith and their inspirational ways of living with tips by the author on how to incorporate them into your own life. Refreshing and relaxing ways to find faith and wonder in this world and share it.

I appreciated this introduction to a number of different Christian figures from across the years, some more recent and others further back in history.

Marsh writes engagingly and does a great job at introducing the reader to each person and their historical significance, as well as suggesting ways to go deeper in our faith as a result. Thought-provoking indeed.

I received an eARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This book is so good for the soul! Short, digestible chapters that are perfect to pick up and read when you have a moment. I love that each chapter ends with an optional call to action that can spur you forward to future contemplation. Absolutely recommending this to all my friends!

An unusual devotional, taking an aspect of influence from significant people of faith through history, theologians and thinkers, and applying modern day examples of how their advice, wisdom and disciplines can be applied. Karen then adds plenty of practical suggestions on how we may be able to apply the practices ourselves.

Each "invitation", not chapters, offers plenty of food for thought and contemplation. The topics are taken from the teachings of some very interesting people, many of whom I had not heard of before but will now certainly look up their writings.

In fact, I took this book to read with me on a weekend retreat at a Benedictine monastery, which turned out to be inspired. It was wonderful, offering up all sorts of creative ways to apply faith to my thoughts. During a time of contemplation, the studies in this book gave me a diverse range of topics to ponder, often offering me an area to focus on. I was also mighty encouraged to find a chapter on St Benedict and his teachings.

This may well be an extreme approach, so equally helpful would be to read one section each day, or each week, in the normal way for a devotional, and then apply it. It only needs for some of what it says to stick, to encourage you to be more intentional in thoughts and actions, more healthy, physically, emotionally and spiritually and initiate the process of making a bigger difference to the world.

It is a lovely collection of wisdoms to ponder each day. Our digital, social media savvy world might be tempted to re-label them as "life hacks" and broadcast them with a clever but disposable meme. But this would be crude and so much less than these writings deserve. True wisdom is precious. These deserve to be deeply pondered, to speak some permanent truths into our lives. The invitations are there, generously given and free to accept.

I enjoyed Wake Up to Wonder. It introduced me to several figures that I hadn't previously heard of. I appreciated the recommended practices that went with each chapter and the way Marsh reiterated that her readers have the freedom to engage in as few or as many of them as they'd like to - so often, there's an implied pressure to tackle everything the author suggests. I hope that most of Marsh's readers take the opportunity to learn more about the figures she presents.