Lifted by Sam Allberry

A new book has just been published by IVP in the UK on a subject that will immediately interest any Christian.

It’s on the resurrection. It’s called Lifted, and it’s written by Sam Allberry, whom I got to know in Oxford. Sam has had a powerful ministry amongst undergraduates at Oxford University for a number years. And he knows how to cook Thai food like no-one else I know.

Sam hasn’t just written about the details though – about the eyewitnesses and the empty tomb and the appearances and so on. He tells us of how, as he started to consider the Bible’s teaching about the implications of the resurrection, whole new vistas opened up before him:

It has shed light on a Christian landscape that I’d spent so much time in without even realizing it. The contours, twists and turns that I’ve been navigating for years – sometimes with frustration, sometimes with exhilaration – are now more visible. I can now make sense of them in the light of this extraordinary doctrine. The truth and reality of the resurrection illuminates the detail of so much of our everyday Christian experience.

It’s a book about having a changed perspective, because we can see how things really are. That’s what the resurrection of Jesus gives us. This experience then drives the books four chapters: ‘Assurance’ ‘Hope’ ‘Transformation’ ‘Mission’.

I think the chapter I found most helpful was the one on hope:

The Bible speaks of hope as something we have. It is about looking forward to something that is certain. I have the hope of eternity with Christ. We still don’t control the thing for which we have hope, but God does and has promised eternity to us. There is no degree of risk or disappointment. This hope cannot be frustrated by anyone. Unlike all our other expressions of hope, this is hope that won’t disappoint us (as Paul says in Romans 5:5). It is guaranteed by God himself and bears his signature: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This sort of hope makes living possible, for it gives us a future. Part of what makes us human is the ability to consider the future. We can’t help but be conscious of it. And we need to be. We need to have a future which is, to some extent, sorted out. We need to have hope.

All Christian people need to know the great joy of living in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Sam has done us all a favour in writing such a engaging and readable book about such a vital subject. It is by turns amusing, moving, encouraging and profound. Truly, Sam helps us to look to a familiar horizon with fresh eyes. Lifted is a book that could easily form the centre of a discussion group, but any individual reader will be – well, ‘lifted’! – by what they find here.