Jeff Noble

It’s not often that an author would’ve glad that I’ve read and reviewed his boring book. When I get to hash tag quotes from it as #boringbook, most would think I’m insulting him. Yet, this is the boring book that you will want to digest, and you’ll find it anything but. Rather, it addresses all the boring areas of your life and offers you profound solutions for recovering meaning and joy in them. Michael Kelley’s premise in Boring is that even the most routine and mundane area of life – places where we’re tempted to overlook opportunities for significance – are actually moments of profound invitation for the Christian.

Michael begins with the obscure story of pre-king Saul looking for some of his dad’s lost donkeys. It’s a tale that most of us zip by 1 Samuel 8. We read quickly because it’s, well, boring. And that’s why the book is sublimely powerful. As Michael unpacks this seemingly irrelevant incident, he reveals that what we often consider as mundane, routine and boring are not viewed as such by God. Rather, God is in process of doing something significant – in Saul’s case of providing Israel with its first king.

“..the donkeys aren’t a distraction from the work of God; the donkeys are the mechanism that God used to awaken Saul to something deeper.. What if those ordinary details of life are actually the mechanism by which we get to see and experience God and His redemptive plan in a living and vibrant way?”

For the rest of the book, Kelley provides chapter after chapter of seemingly boring areas of life in which God’s activity is profoundly present yet maddeningly obscure for those of us paralyzed by the familiar. Our finances are boring. Our work is boring. Some would say the day-in, day-out of kids, spouse, car, eating, etc are so mundane as to numb the soul.

Click here for the rest of the review on my blog.