Customer Reviews

The Hungering Dark

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This is a wonderful collection of sermons that both brightens and enlightens. Mr. Buechner has a manner of writing that brings joy and strengthens faith. In the still quiet of a room, read this book. It helps.

Like all of Buechner's books, I can't tell you what they are about. They are about life. Its ups and downs and sorrows and joys. Buechner writes prose like he is a poet. Sure, he's a Calvinist preacher, but he isn't as curt as C.S. Lewis can be, and he is certainly not going to cram Christianity down your throat. I bawled through Chapters 7 & 8, and read the whole book in one afternoon. I will be reading it again, for sure.

Within all of us there is a longing, a hungering that we cannot fill on our own. Nevertheless, we all try to fill it: whether it is through people, money, things, work, education, fame. We end up living in a world of shadows and if we realize this, we wake up and find ourselves in the dark. What causes this hunger that leads us into the dark? The answer is simple enough: God. Yet, simplicity is complex. In this book full full of joy and hope, Beuchner examines this issue helping to enlighten the struggle we all face with the hungering dark.

We all understand life by looking "through a glass, darkly." Buechner, poetically as usual, tackles some of the why, for why it's so hard and scary for us to really see the truths about God. Buechner divides the book into "The Search," our responsibility to seek God to fill our hungering dark, and "The Sought," God's ever-present desire to bring us to him.

Buechner is poignant and insightful. Each chapter is complete and yet leaves the reader hanging on for more. It's like the reading equivalent of savoring a piece of cheesecake.

this is a good book by my second favorite author. my first fav is cs lewis.

buechner has taught me more about humility than any other author i've read.

he's a writer's writer - his sentences are almost poetry - great works of art that you can read over and over again for the elegance as well as the great message.

I do not know of a Christian writer who uses the English language with more eloquence and beauty than Buechner. That being said, Beuchner's existential approach to faith is both his greatest strength and weakness. This book will move you, but often not in any specific direction. Form tends to overshadow depth and the seeker often overshadows the Sought. But I think anyone would enjoy this book immensely.