A Small Cup of Light: A Drink in the Desert by Ben Palpant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is simply a superb book. It is beautifully written, theologically rigorous, elegantly typeset, and carefully designed. Every page was easy to look at and equally easy to turn.
This is book for anyone dealing with (apparently) inexplicable suffering. That may be you, or it may be someone close to you. In this book, Ben Palpant raises all the hard questions without flinching, and offers clear and careful answers that go all the way down to the right part of the soul. He does this without patronizing anybody, or patting the back of the reader’s hand once.
I don’t want to say too much about it because, even though it is non-fiction, I don’t want to create the spoiler effect of telling you in summary what he says so well over the course of the book. But I will tell you one thing. Palpant is a teacher in one of our classical Christian schools here in the Pacific Northwest, and one day, some years ago, the lights in the city of his mind began to go out, one by one. Everything shut down. He didn’t know what was happening, or why it was happening. “What I wanted most of all, and what they couldn’t deliver, was a name for my illness” (p. 26). The harrowing story of the many months that followed is remarkable for how complicated it all is, and how simple it remains.
I know that many would be encouraged by this book, and want to urge them to it. The Puritans were great on the subject of affliction, and here in this book we have that same set of sensibilities in modern guise. One Puritan once said that affliction was a dirty lane to a royal palace, and that is the testimony of this book.
I bought this on the strength of your recommendation. It’s well worth it.