Customer Reviews

The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God

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When Multnomah sent me The Holy Wild by Mark Buchanan, I tossed it into my ever-growing "to-read" stack thinking that I might get to it some year. But for some reason, I think because I had no clue what a book entitled "The Holy Wild" would be about, I picked it up and started browsing. When I got to chapter 3 in my skimming I read,

A leaf. Behold a single leaf. So fragile, it tears like paper, crushes in your hand to a moist stain, sharply fragrant. Dry, it burns swift and crackling as newsprint, pungent as gunpowder. Yet a leaf may withstand hurricanes, stubbornly clinging to its limb.

Hold it open in your palm. It is perfect as a newborn's smile. Pinch its stem between thumb and forefinger and hold it to the light. Eden bleeds through. Its veins are like bone work in silhouette. This single leaf, joined to the tree, drinks poison from the air, drinks it serenely as Socrates downing his cup of hemlock, and refuses to return in kind, instead spilling out life-giving oxygen. This leaf tilts to catch the sun, its warmth and radiance, to distill the heat and light down to the shadows, down to the roots, back up to limbs. To shade the earth. To feed you and me.

A leaf. God makes these season after season, one after the other, billions upon billions, from the Garden to the New Jerusalem, most for no eye but His own. He does it faithfully, or else I would not live to tell about it, or you to hear.

Perhaps of all my many sins against heaven, this ranks with the worst: Until this moment, I have never thanked God for a single leaf.

Which is the problem with faithfulness: We hardly notice it. Faithfulness is, by definition, the predictable, the habitual, the sturdy, the routine. It is the evidence of things seen, but seen so often we've grown blind to them. It is the substance of things expected, expected so unthinkingly that we now take them for granted.

It is the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the skin we inhabit, the way our insides tick and pulse and spin on their own, in season and out, whether we sleep or work or play, without asking us or us having to ask. It is these myriad amazing things: toes and eyes, leaf veins and cloudbursts, bedrock and ozone, seed and sap that by their very constancy and durability have worn familiar or become invisible. The sheer steadfastness of things that surround and uphold us are dull with the caking of the ordinary. We live amidst the surpassing wonders, but most of it has become run-of-the-mill. We dwell among endless miracles that, repeated day after day, have grown tedious. We are lavished with gifts that we now expect or ignore or begrudge.

Faithfulness bores us.
Who among us leapt up this morning as the sun rose, exclaiming, "Look! Look, everybody, look! The sun! Here it comes! Hallelujah, it's here again!"? Or who ran through the house shouting, "Ha ha! Air! Behold! Air! Clean air, fresh air, air to fill my lungs, air to shape my words, air to move the clouds, air to lift the birds"?

Not me. I woke up groaning.

This chapter stopped me in my tracks and pointed me to my faithful, just, loving, gracious, fear- and honor-evoking God. As I continued to read, many other chapters did the same. Mark Buchanan is obviously an extremely talented writer. Each sentence has been meticulously crafted; his imagery is so vivid that the images, the sounds, the smells, and the emotions that are in his mind when he writes are almost certainly recreated perfectly in the mind of the reader. But this is not reason enough for me to recommend a book. The object of such picturesque and thought-provoking language is God, who give Mark an endless canvas of beauty, wonder, and intrigue from which to draw in his artistic writing.

I normally do not read books like this. I can't even define what "like this" is. But suffice it to say that I would be more likely to pick up a book by Spurgeon, Piper, Mahaney, or Martin Luther than Mark Buchanan or Max Lucado ("fluffy writers"). But this has been to my detriment. Although, I cannot give this book at 5 star rating because I think that many thoughts are left unfinished and some exegesis incomplete and possibly misleading (Good Samaritan text in particular), I can say that the writing has left me wanting more.

Small bits and pieces of God and his character were exposed. God is magnified and glorified by being shown to be who He is, a God who causes us to fear and tremble at the mere mention of His Name, and the God to whom we can run and give all of our cares, concerns, and hopes. Mark helps us discover more and more what he discovered and describes in the last chapter,

"I have discovered, as I hoped and feared in my younger days, that God is no drab pedant, meddling and puttering, but the Lion of Judah, the Lord of the Holy Wild. The God, who when He speaks or shows Himself, stirs in me two impulses at onece: to run FROM Him and to run TO Him."
-Jacob Hantla

Mark Buchanan's third book is, in my estimation the best yet. Tapping into a similar theme from his first book, Your God is Too Safe, Mark discusses the real character of God - the dangerous, even perilous, but good God. Moving the reader away from the notion of a God who resembles a nit-picky, small-minded bean-counter or a permissive, sleepy grandfather who keeps his distance, Buchanan reveals a God that is both dangerous and GOOD!

How we see the world around us is largely shaped by how we view God. In an unexpected way, this book can literally alter how you view the world and the God who runs it!

Mark Buchanan is a rare combination. Certain authors are weak in the writing department, yet they do a wonderful job of telling stories and communicating truth. Others are masters in the art of literature, but they fail to touch us on a heart level. Buchanan mixes sparkling words with piercing insight, and delivers a book that should be read by all.

"The Holy Wild" is a book for anyone who has struggled with the questions of life. It doesn't turn its eyes from the ugliness of disease or disaster; it doesn't candy-coat the realities of abuse and addiction. It does, however, nudge us into the presence of the living God, reminding us to view life through his majesty, his justice, and his grace.

With the theological depth of CS Lewis and the storytelling ease of John Eldredge, Mark Buchanan is a voice that demands to be heard.

If you are in a difficult place and not sure if God is listening or even there - then this is the book for you. I found the author's meditations on various aspects of God's character enlightening, encouraging and comforting. It was a thoroughly delightful read that challenged and enabled me to trust Him more as well. His writing is inspired and I was in awe of his range of knowledge and subjects. His curiosity, transparency and child-like awe of God's awesomeness AND tenderness towards us is infectious and refreshing. The Holy Wild is one of the best reads I have had in quite a while!

The beginning section is brilliant. The last section is powerful. In between it drags a bit. But the great insights into the Wild side of God are more than worth the price of the book. I find Mark Buchanan's work both challenging and enjoyable and I think you will too.

Very good work!

While I have to agree with another reviewer that this material is covered by other authors like Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, I think that this book has a disticnt niche place on its very own in how Mark describes and explains what it means to "rest" in the character of God. Each reader can come to their own conslusion, but I found this book amazingly refreshing, and deeply enjoyable to read. For those always reading books on strategic methodology or the more academic theology with its verbose explanations, this will be a fantastic catalyst for experiencing the Holy Wild of God anew.

What I learned: How and why to rest in the character and faithfulness of a Holy God, and what that "rest" will do to my entire life.

Mark Buchanan made me look at our God in a whole new light. I have used many of his ideas to instill excitement when I teach Bible classes. I have come to love and revere God even more than I thought possible.

The essence of "The Holy Wild" is counter-intuitive to what you might think from the title. This is not a book about "how to be wild" or being a "wild Christian" - at least that's not its primary consideration. The primary consideration, instead, has to do with how "wild" you think God is.

If your picture of God is some ever-compromising impotent walker-bound grandfather, then you'll never be able to fully rest in His house. You will instead tire yourself to death keeping all night watches and fighting windmills. If that is you, you will have no energy left to embrace the intoxicating wilderness of His Kingdom. You will, in effect, lose the wilderness in the domestication.

Buchanan reinforces the perplexing wild God that we know from Scripture. This is a God who is good beyond our goodness, victorious through a cross, and wise beyond even the wildest of our imaginations. This is the God whom we can worship. This is the God in whose arms we can rest. This is a God who we can trust when He promises we will be safe if we shut our eyes for a nap.

If you haven't been risking for God, or if you have gotten tired of taking risks that you thought were God-led; if you haven't trusted God, or if you feel like the God you've been trusting isn't there --- this is a book for you.

Who is God? What is he like? Can God be trusted? Is God worthy to be worshiped? In The Holy Wild, Mark Buchanan searches wide and deep for the answers to these questions. His verdict: All too often, we perceive God as capricious, or boring, or angry, or irrelevant, somebody to turn to in trouble but ignore otherwise. Instead, Buchanan says, God is wild, God is just, God is beyond our expectations and dreams. God may not be as stable as we'd like, but God can be trusted.

The chapters of the book are organized around different lenses through which Buchanan ponders this Holy Wild God: God's goodness, love, wrath, mercy, victory, holiness, creativity, and so on. The prose is a mixture of meditation and story - stories from the author's own life and ministry, and a salting of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, church history, poetry, and philosophy.

The Holy Wild is in the end a devotional book, pulling one deeper rather than broader. I'm not so sure I learned anything new here, but I was forced to sit and linger over many things I'd rushed by in the past. In the end, it was a nice patch of grass in which to sit and reflect.

Mark Buchanan is so descriptive in his imagery of the Holy One of the Bible. I found it refreshing, breathtaking, exciting, and of course as he discribes Him dangerous, but He is good. The use of C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles as an anology is excellent and right on the mark. Mark takes our everyday struggles, our everyday questions and put them to the test and STILL the Holy Wild is indeed, good. Peace.