How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now - Hardcover

James K. A. Smith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1587435233 ISBN 13: 9781587435232

Publisher: Brazos Press, 2022

Synopsis

2023 Christian Book Award® Winner (Christian Living)
Christianity Today 2023 Book Award Finalist (Christian Living & Spiritual Formation)

The Spiritual Significance of Time

Many Christians live a faith that is "nowhen." They are disconnected from the past or imagine they are somehow "above" the flux of history, as if every generation starts with a clean state. They lack an awareness of time and the effects of history--both personal and collective--and thus are naive about current issues, prone to nostalgia, or fixated on the end times and other doomsday versions of the future.

Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith explains that we must reckon with the past in order to discern the present and have hope for the future. Integrating popular culture, biblical exposition, and meditation, he helps us develop a sense of "temporal awareness" that is attuned to the texture of history, the vicissitudes of life, and the tempo of the Spirit.

Smith shows that awakening to the spiritual significance of time is crucial for orienting faith in the twenty-first century. It allows us to become indebted to the past, oriented toward the future, and faithful in the present.

★ "This incisive and eloquent volume will expand readers' minds."--Publishers Weekly starred review

"A beautifully written book. . . . [Smith] offers a good, pastoral word to Christians today."--Christian Century

About this title

About the Author

James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is a popular speaker and the award-winning author of a number of influential books, including Desiring the Kingdom, You Are What You Love, On the Road with Saint Augustine, How to Inhabit Time, and How (Not) to Be Secular. He is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. Smith served as editor in chief of Comment magazine (2013-2018) and Image journal (2019-2024). He has written for Christianity Today, The Christian Century, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

From the Back Cover

2023 Christian Book Award® Winner (Christian Living)
Christianity Today 2023 Book Award Finalist (Christian Living & Spiritual Formation)
Outreach 2023 Recommended Resource (Christian Living)
A "Best Book of 2022," Englewood Review of Books

The Spiritual Significance of Time

Many Christians live a faith that is "nowhen." They are disconnected from the past or imagine they are somehow "above" the flux of history, immune to it, as if self-starters from clean slates in every generation. They lack an awareness of time and the effects of history--both personal and collective--and thus are naive about current issues, prone to nostalgia, and fixated on the end times.

In How to Inhabit Time, popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that awakening to the spiritual significance of time is crucial for orienting faith in the twenty-first century. He helps us develop a sense of "temporal awareness" that is attuned to the texture of history, the vicissitudes of life, and the tempo of the Spirit.

"James K. A. Smith shows us that time is a gift waiting to be redeemed, and a central conviction of this book is that 'the Lord of the star fields' is intimately attuned to our haunted, beautiful histories. Dwelling with these lucid, winsome meditations on 'spiritual timekeeping' was like listening in on a lively conversation between St. Augustine, Gustavo Gutiérrez, James Baldwin, and Marilynne Robinson, while Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon played in the background."
--Fred Bahnson, author of Soil and Sacrament

"James K. A. Smith's inspired work examines time not as hourglass sand running hopelessly through our fingers but as a divine gift that we can capture just enough to recognize the pearl of life that time shapes. A thoughtful and engaging book."
--Sophfronia Scott, author of The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton

From the Inside Flap

"In this arresting and elegant book, Jamie Smith gives us a profound and beguiling meditation on time (and therefore death), on embodiment (and therefore love), on creaturehood (and therefore our orientation toward God). Philosophically rigorous and creatively daring, this original and provocative exploration summons each of us to diligent thinking and unflinching honesty, to (in Smith's own phrase) 'shared vulnerability' and deep prayer."
--Charles Marsh, University of Virginia; author of Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"In How to Inhabit Time, James K. A. Smith makes of his boundless knowledge and crystalline thinking a most evocative/provocative succession of scenes--a sensuous narrative that asks us to recalibrate our idea of time so that we might carry ourselves, with grace and gratitude, through it."
--Beth Kephart, author of Wife | Daughter | Self: A Memoir in Essays

"James K. A. Smith draws from biblical, philosophical, and therapeutic insights to weave our lives into a wondrous drama far greater than can be found in the fleeting and distracting present tense. Along the way he courageously tells his own story of finding hope for the future by reckoning with his past, our past, and God's redemptive event that is still unfolding."
--M. Craig Barnes, president, Princeton Theological Seminary

"Jamie Smith is a crucial philosopher and theologian. In a time of frightening upheaval over the nature of identity, we dearly need this wise and winsome book about how to inhabit time well. Listen to Smith unpack a song, a poem, a passage from Ecclesiastes, or a philosopher's lifework, and come away challenged, changed, and delighted."
--Jason Byassee, Vancouver School of Theology

Edition details

• Publisher: Brazos Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1587435233
• ISBN 13: 9781587435232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208