In matters of faith and the heart, Jim Palmer’s Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the Unlikely People Who Help You) offers a welcome breath of fresh air. A former pastor who saw his own life turn upside down, Palmer took a roller coaster ride from driven evangelical pastor to discount store clerk (among other jobs), a process that might seem disastrous in our success-driven culture. But for Palmer it became an opportunity to wake up to a real and personal relationship with God. Palmer draws the reader toward a simpler faith, a life lived with Christ that sees the worth in every person and presents the possibility that a garage owner, a waitress or a checkout clerk can teach us as much about Christ as a preacher with a string of seminary degrees. For those who feel trapped by a culture that measures faith by outside appearances, Divine Nobodies will read like a blowtorch to the bars of a cage. Palmer’s call to a faith that is deep, personal and based purely on the love of Christ should resonate with readers.
Howard Shirley is the author of Acts for God: 38 Dramatic Sketches for Contemporary Services. He writes from Franklin, Tennessee.
