Have you ever had a conversation that went far deeper than the words spoken or an experience where you felt you had participated in something sacred? Although these situations may seem unexplainable, they are reminders that God's grace surrounds us constantly and shows up in manifold ways. In this colorful, story-driven introduction to sacramental living, veteran journalist Dean Nelson offers all Christians a way to see the presence of God amid the chaos and monotony of everyday life. Each chapter emphasizes a different kind of sacramental moment, showing how it can be a lens through which we can see more of God.
God Hides in Plain Sight
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Seeing the Presence of God in Everyday Life
"Dean Nelson has a lively, conversational writing style, and this book has wonderful and valuable things to say. I won't soon forget them."--Frederick Buechner, author of Listening to Your Life
"In a world where so much miraculous is perceived as ordinary, Dean Nelson points out the places where we see God in our everyday lives, helping us understand that the mundane might actually be holy. In a wonderful narrative, Nelson weaves the sacred presence of God through his text and reveals that thread also running through our own lives. A lovely read."--Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz
"The church has long used the concept of sacraments--outward signs of inward grace--to name the spaces where God meets us in an especially present way. For many Christians, however, that language seems abstract, even (sadly) foreign. Dean Nelson lovingly explores those spaces of encountering God; his luminous book has helped me see anew the sacred in the ordinary."--Lauren Winner, Duke Divinity School, author of Girl Meets God
"Dean Nelson is God's spy, looking for God in all the times and places most of us would never think to explore. He doesn't miss much. Combining the readability of excellent writing and the reliability of sound scholarship, God Hides in Plain Sight is better than a spy novel."--Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message, Regent College, Vancouver
"Dean Nelson writes beautifully. And no less wonderful, he sees beautifully and knows how to help us see what he sees. God Hides in Plain Sight will help you spot what is most worth seeing (and very easily missed): the beauty of God camouflaged in the sacrament of your daily experience."--Brian McLaren, author and activist, brianmclaren.net
"If God is indeed hidden in the world around us, then we're blessed to have a warm, entertaining tour guide in Dean Nelson. He leads us through the sacraments with humor and creative insight, expertly pointing out the places--and the Presence--most of us miss along the way."--Jason Boyett, author of Pocket Guide to the Bible and Pocket Guide to the Afterlife
"Dean Nelson has a lively, conversational writing style, and this book has wonderful and valuable things to say. I won't soon forget them."--Frederick Buechner, author of Listening to Your Life
"In a world where so much miraculous is perceived as ordinary, Dean Nelson points out the places where we see God in our everyday lives, helping us understand that the mundane might actually be holy. In a wonderful narrative, Nelson weaves the sacred presence of God through his text and reveals that thread also running through our own lives. A lovely read."--Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz
"The church has long used the concept of sacraments--outward signs of inward grace--to name the spaces where God meets us in an especially present way. For many Christians, however, that language seems abstract, even (sadly) foreign. Dean Nelson lovingly explores those spaces of encountering God; his luminous book has helped me see anew the sacred in the ordinary."--Lauren Winner, Duke Divinity School, author of Girl Meets God
"Dean Nelson is God's spy, looking for God in all the times and places most of us would never think to explore. He doesn't miss much. Combining the readability of excellent writing and the reliability of sound scholarship, God Hides in Plain Sight is better than a spy novel."--Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message, Regent College, Vancouver
"Dean Nelson writes beautifully. And no less wonderful, he sees beautifully and knows how to help us see what he sees. God Hides in Plain Sight will help you spot what is most worth seeing (and very easily missed): the beauty of God camouflaged in the sacrament of your daily experience."--Brian McLaren, author and activist, brianmclaren.net
"If God is indeed hidden in the world around us, then we're blessed to have a warm, entertaining tour guide in Dean Nelson. He leads us through the sacraments with humor and creative insight, expertly pointing out the places--and the Presence--most of us miss along the way."--Jason Boyett, author of Pocket Guide to the Bible and Pocket Guide to the Afterlife
About the Author
Dean Nelson (PhD, Ohio University) is founder and director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California, where he serves as professor of journalism. He has written extensively for dozens of newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Christianity Today, and is the author or coauthor of several books.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In his 1933 essay, "The End of Our Time," Nicholas Berdyaev writes: "Two attitudes, two completely divergent positions, are possible for man, and he finds the face of everything different accordingly as he chooses the one or the other. He can --- if he will --- put himself in the presence of God and the mystery of being. Then he has a clear conscience and a clean heart, revelation and intuition are vouchsafed to him, the true primordial spirit appears, he reaches to the very source of all."
It is precisely this posture toward reality and experience that Dean Nelson endorses in his new book: "God Hides in Plain Sight." Nelson, who reminds me of Leonard Sweet in person --- brilliant, quick on his feet, enormously well read --- writes here with the poetic grace of Anne Lamott or Thomas Merton, exploring the mystery and the meaning of Divine presence in everyday moments.
By day, Nelson writes op-ed pieces in The New York Times and other venues while leading the journalism department at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Yet in these pages he writes from a philosophical perspective. Using a skeletal outline from the Christian sacraments, Nelson traces the tiny, often unobserved specks of DNA evidence that establish God's paternity amid His creation, teaching us to be more attentive as we experience family, community and society.
Woven through these well-crafted pages are quotes from Henri Nouwen, Walter Wangerin, Frederick Buechner and others, including novelist Walker Percy. The result is a collection of tightly-written essays that command the reader's notice while rewarding it with perceptive and intriguing depth.
With this book, Nelson places himself among the first tier of contemporary thinkers, challenging us to address the critical questions of life by becoming more attentive to daily graces.
Dr. David Frisbie
The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
You might also appreciate reading: The Power of Serving Others: You Can Start Where You Are
It is precisely this posture toward reality and experience that Dean Nelson endorses in his new book: "God Hides in Plain Sight." Nelson, who reminds me of Leonard Sweet in person --- brilliant, quick on his feet, enormously well read --- writes here with the poetic grace of Anne Lamott or Thomas Merton, exploring the mystery and the meaning of Divine presence in everyday moments.
By day, Nelson writes op-ed pieces in The New York Times and other venues while leading the journalism department at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Yet in these pages he writes from a philosophical perspective. Using a skeletal outline from the Christian sacraments, Nelson traces the tiny, often unobserved specks of DNA evidence that establish God's paternity amid His creation, teaching us to be more attentive as we experience family, community and society.
Woven through these well-crafted pages are quotes from Henri Nouwen, Walter Wangerin, Frederick Buechner and others, including novelist Walker Percy. The result is a collection of tightly-written essays that command the reader's notice while rewarding it with perceptive and intriguing depth.
With this book, Nelson places himself among the first tier of contemporary thinkers, challenging us to address the critical questions of life by becoming more attentive to daily graces.
Dr. David Frisbie
The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
You might also appreciate reading: The Power of Serving Others: You Can Start Where You Are
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By jthw
Format:Paperback
So in the interest of fair disclosure, I know the author and think he is a great guy. Nonetheless, I am writing this because I truly loved his book and not to be polite. I found this book both both highly readable and profound. I enjoyed the stories, anecdotes, and quotes from other deep thinkers. More than that I loved the deeper sense of intimacy I felt with God after experiencing this book. This book was so good, I loaned it to a friend who was in agony she couldn't highlight and write in it. Needless to say, I went out and bought a copy for her. I hope you like it also.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It all started in India. Well, kind of. In retrospect, I'm sure Dean Nelson would agree that GOD HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT is a book that has been in the making long before that trip. But it was in India, on a brief teaching assignment, where Nelson started to notice things that seemed unusual --- incidents that reminded him of his family. A piano player in the hotel lobby played songs two days in a row that his children had played at a recital the night before he left on the trip. A student, a missionary, in his class wrote a paper about a transformative experience with a pastor back in Wisconsin --- a man who happened to be Nelson's father-in-law. Nelson is quick to say that coincidences do happen. But he also saw in these events a kind of greeting from God.
He writes, "I believe that grace goes before us as a way for God to say, `Welcome! I got here before you. I've been expecting you.' That is exactly how I felt when I heard this missionary read his assignment in Bombay. I was alone, feeling like a Martian, a little bit afraid, and I sensed God saying to me, `See? You're with me, and you're going to be fine.'"
As Nelson tells it, that experience gave him courage, even amused him. And he started paying closer attention to his life. "What I hungered for was better vision so I could see God and his activity throughout my day. I believed that his grace and love and presence were all around me, but I wasn't seeing them. I wasn't living with that knowledge at my center. I wanted the blinders off. I wanted to catch the subtleties of God's activity."
Such vision doesn't develop overnight. But slowly and steadily, Nelson started to see and understand that grace is constantly breaking into everyday moments, making them different --- sacred --- drawing us into the presence of God. "It's not about us getting a hold of the sacred. It's about the sacred getting a hold of us," he writes.
In GOD HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT, Nelson unpacks how the idea of the sacraments --- outward signs of inward grace --- helped him see God at work in the world. Through rich and wonderful storytelling, he explores the outlandish and mundane, urging readers to see God at work in all areas of life, even (and especially) the messy, chaotic and even boring areas. His important lessons come easily through engaging and good-spirited prose, making this a read that is both delicious and nutritious.
But don't just take my word for it. The cover of GOD HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT features a nature scene that evokes the title and an endorsement from Frederick Buechner in the upper right-hand corner: "This book has wonderful and valuable things to say." Buechner's assessment is true, and he should take some personal satisfaction in this given that Nelson is clearly beholden to Buechner's work in the development of his own ability to see God in the world around him. Nelson writes, "Much of our lives, it seems to me, are spent like that of the main character in Camus' novel, THE STRANGER; we are indifferent, unmoved, unfeeling, walking dead people. Not until the stranger faced his own death did he ever notice the stars in the sky. He reminds me of a lot of people I meet. `Listen to your life,' Buechner said. `See it for the fathomless mystery that it is ... There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize Him or not to recognize Him.'"
Nelson's own fluid prose and keen observations are often bolstered with insights from not just Buechner, but from a wide array of writers and thinkers, including Anne Lamott, Philip Yancey, Eugene Peterson, Thomas Merton, Henri Nowen and Frederica Mathewes-Green. This rich contextualization is a delightful feature of the book that introduces (or perhaps reintroduces) readers to other authors whose work they will also want to explore.
I myself hope to track down a book by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, first published in the 1700s, titled THE SACRAMENT OF THE PRESENT MOMENT. As Nelson relates, "[Caussade] says that God's activity permeates all things, even the most trivial and annoying. Look for God backstage, he says, not center stage. `No moment is trivial,' he said, `since each one contains a divine Kingdom. The present moment is like an ambassador announcing the policy of God.'"
But before Caussade, I look forward to spending more time with Nelson. His lively, conversational tone makes GOD HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT a pleasure to read. It's the kind of book you want to revisit, to slow down with, and to learn from. And in this way it's like a good friend, one that's helping you to see your own life more clearly by bringing God's presence into focus.
--- Reviewed by Lisa Ann Cockrel
He writes, "I believe that grace goes before us as a way for God to say, `Welcome! I got here before you. I've been expecting you.' That is exactly how I felt when I heard this missionary read his assignment in Bombay. I was alone, feeling like a Martian, a little bit afraid, and I sensed God saying to me, `See? You're with me, and you're going to be fine.'"
As Nelson tells it, that experience gave him courage, even amused him. And he started paying closer attention to his life. "What I hungered for was better vision so I could see God and his activity throughout my day. I believed that his grace and love and presence were all around me, but I wasn't seeing them. I wasn't living with that knowledge at my center. I wanted the blinders off. I wanted to catch the subtleties of God's activity."
Such vision doesn't develop overnight. But slowly and steadily, Nelson started to see and understand that grace is constantly breaking into everyday moments, making them different --- sacred --- drawing us into the presence of God. "It's not about us getting a hold of the sacred. It's about the sacred getting a hold of us," he writes.
In GOD HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT, Nelson unpacks how the idea of the sacraments --- outward signs of inward grace --- helped him see God at work in the world. Through rich and wonderful storytelling, he explores the outlandish and mundane, urging readers to see God at work in all areas of life, even (and especially) the messy, chaotic and even boring areas. His important lessons come easily through engaging and good-spirited prose, making this a read that is both delicious and nutritious.
But don't just take my word for it. The cover of GOD HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT features a nature scene that evokes the title and an endorsement from Frederick Buechner in the upper right-hand corner: "This book has wonderful and valuable things to say." Buechner's assessment is true, and he should take some personal satisfaction in this given that Nelson is clearly beholden to Buechner's work in the development of his own ability to see God in the world around him. Nelson writes, "Much of our lives, it seems to me, are spent like that of the main character in Camus' novel, THE STRANGER; we are indifferent, unmoved, unfeeling, walking dead people. Not until the stranger faced his own death did he ever notice the stars in the sky. He reminds me of a lot of people I meet. `Listen to your life,' Buechner said. `See it for the fathomless mystery that it is ... There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize Him or not to recognize Him.'"
Nelson's own fluid prose and keen observations are often bolstered with insights from not just Buechner, but from a wide array of writers and thinkers, including Anne Lamott, Philip Yancey, Eugene Peterson, Thomas Merton, Henri Nowen and Frederica Mathewes-Green. This rich contextualization is a delightful feature of the book that introduces (or perhaps reintroduces) readers to other authors whose work they will also want to explore.
I myself hope to track down a book by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, first published in the 1700s, titled THE SACRAMENT OF THE PRESENT MOMENT. As Nelson relates, "[Caussade] says that God's activity permeates all things, even the most trivial and annoying. Look for God backstage, he says, not center stage. `No moment is trivial,' he said, `since each one contains a divine Kingdom. The present moment is like an ambassador announcing the policy of God.'"
But before Caussade, I look forward to spending more time with Nelson. His lively, conversational tone makes GOD HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT a pleasure to read. It's the kind of book you want to revisit, to slow down with, and to learn from. And in this way it's like a good friend, one that's helping you to see your own life more clearly by bringing God's presence into focus.
--- Reviewed by Lisa Ann Cockrel
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
God doesn't play hide and seek.
In his 1992 film Husbands and Wives, Woody Allen's character watches television, as a scientist quotes Einstein, "God doesn't play with dice. Read more
Published on February 5, 2011 by Lover of Philosophy
5.0 out of 5 stars
"God Hides in Plain Sight"--a must read
A previous reviewer of Dean Nelson's "God Hides in Plain sight" had this to say,
"Nelson's own fluid prose and keen observations are often bolstered with insights from not... Read more
"Nelson's own fluid prose and keen observations are often bolstered with insights from not... Read more
Published on November 17, 2010 by Paul Berry
5.0 out of 5 stars
well-sritten and thoughtful
Organized around the Christian sacraments, this book presents welcome insights into living a Christian life. Written in accessible and interesting manner. Read more
Published on June 25, 2010 by P. Lyndale
5.0 out of 5 stars
Share This Book with Friends
At last! A Christian book without a whiff of sanctimoniousness.
Dean Nelson is a cool guy, but more than that, he's a superb teacher and storyteller. Read more
Dean Nelson is a cool guy, but more than that, he's a superb teacher and storyteller. Read more
Published on September 28, 2009 by M. C. Lawrence
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
So You'd Like to...
|
|
