Overview
Chaos and overwhelming pressure can push us to confront the big questions of life: Are we living with meaning? Are we using our time well? Is it possible to live a life without regret?
Navigator author Jerry White offers practical suggestions for focusing on the purpose God has for each of us. He deals with real-life issues—grief, aging, marriage, stress, parenting,tragedy—and presents welcome solutions to surviving the chaotic storm swirling around us and inside us.
Synopsis
IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE PEACE IN A WORLD FULL OF CHAOS? Our lives are too busy, too occupied, and too hurried. Chaos presses us from all directions. And it’s not just external influences such as explosive technology, the threat of terrorism, and packed schedules. Chaos also fills our hearts and minds as we wrestle with dissatisfaction, emptiness, failure, competition, worry, and anger. We tire of the unpredictability and disorder. We long for tranquility and quietness. But life goes on with little change. To escape chaos is like arguing with the wind or the ocean. It’s inescapable. It’s also ripe with opportunity. Making Peace with Reality shows how times of chaos and overwhelming pressure push us to confront the big questions of life: Are we living with meaning and purpose? Are we using our time well? Is it possible to live a life without regret? Jerry White offers insights from his own years of living in life’s trenches and making peace with his reality. With a look at the past, he reveals how we got to today’s chaos and offers hope for a peaceful tomorrow. Offering practical suggestions for focusing on the meaning and purpose God has for each of us, Making Peace with Reality presents welcome solutions to surviving the chaotic storm swirling around us and inside us.
Publishers Weekly
For a book that the author says has been 40 years in the making, one might expect a more orderly approach to helping readers disarm the all-powerful foe of chaotic living. As president and CEO of the evangelical Christian group the Navigators, White (Dangers Men Face) understands how a high-profile position contains many temptations to give into the "chaotic" rather than make prudent career and lifestyle decisions, thereby ensuring personal peace. As no one can escape the world's chaos, he argues that it is essential to learn to cope with reality. He offers plausible solutions for developing personal perseverance, defined as qualities of endurance, persistence, tenacity, steadfastness and resolve. White asserts that one's personality, health, age and previous life experiences all come into play when one is called to make courageous decisions to disengage from life's mounting pressures. White's educational background in electrical engineering/astronautics and his former position as mission controller at Cape Canaveral may explain his penchant for list-making; this reads more like an extended outline than a sustained book. Countless power-punches of biblical wisdom get lost amid the frequent subheadings and in-chapter divisions, diminishing White's message and impact. Learning to make adjustments along life's road is an important lesson; it is regrettable that this essential tool is rendered almost powerless by its own lack of focus. (Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.