Book Review: "Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time" by Christine Hoover

Life is hard. No matter how often prosperity gospel preachers may try to tell us otherwise, this life will contain hardship, sacrifice, persecution, loss, tragedy, heartache, confusion, and disappointment. There will be easier seasons in our lives, to be sure. But each of us will also face the hard along with the easy.

For a Christian who may have been told that life would always be nothing but sunshine, rainbows, and cotton candy following their coming to Christ, this may come as a terrible shock. Wait, I thought if I only had faith, all would be well? While it is true that eternally all will be well and that the Lord does bring unimaginable good even out of unimaginable pain, the here-and-now of life doesn’t always feel good, and if we are told it’s supposed to, then, well, we’ll have no way to handle it and still be able to walk on with our faith fully intact.

This is why I am so incredibly grateful for Christine Hoover‘s new book, Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time. This is the deeply theological and yet wholly relatable and easy-to-read book we have been needing in the church in our day surrounding the topic of suffering.

Christine dives into the hard topic of suffering by offering a breakdown of Ecclesiates 3:1-8, showing us that there truly is a time and purpose for everything. A time for war and a time for peace, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to weep and a time to laugh, and so on. As she does so, she beautifully captures the part our sufferings have to play in the grand scheme of things, teaching us that no misery, no heartache, no trial is ever wasted or without purpose. Our God always brings good out of them and always allows those experiences into our lives for our ultimate good. He’s a good and kind Father Who knows what is best – even when what is best is hard.

In the midst of so much talk of the dark times of life, Christine is, amazingly, also able to write to us in such a way as to inspire us to search out the good, the wonder, the beauty in our here-and-now everyday lives. She reminds us that beauty and goodness are here somewhere – because God is here. There is always beauty to be found if we will look for it, and even more beauty will come as a result of the seemingly less-than-beautiful seasons of our lives.

If you are going through a hard season in your life right now, I encourage you to pick up a copy of this book! The same goes for if you are just now coming out of a dark season and wondering why God allowed you to go through it, or if perhaps life has been easy for you so far but you expect there to be hardship in the future. Basically, every single Christian would benefit greatly from reading Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time by Christine Hoover.

And: be on the lookout for a podcast interview with Christine releasing this summer!

*I received a complementary copy of Searching for Spring in exchange for my honest review.