2-Minute Book Review: Room For Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau

How Ordinary People Become Every Day Saints

2-Minute Book Review: Room For Good Things to Run Wild: How Ordinary People Become Every Day Saints by Josh Nadeau

I have been following

Josh Nadeau

for a while now.

For several years, he’s been sharing compelling visual and written work on his Instagram page, Sword and Pencil. As someone who recently ditched the ‘gram, one of my only regrets is losing out on his stuff. His substack,

Every Day Saints

, is one of the best you can find.

So when I saw he was publishing a book, it didn’t take me long to purchase — especially seeing how its title was taken from perhaps my all-time favorite quote in perhaps my all-time favorite book.

In chapter 6 of Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton says,

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Chesterton’s sentiment comes alive in this book, which considers how a deep, embodied practice of historic Christianity might provide just what is needed for a truly fulfilled human life.

Good Things Running Wild

There are, fittingly, good things running wild all throughout the pages of this book.

First off: the cover, image design, and typeface. This is, visually, a stunning book (that sadly rare thing in modern publishing). Interspersed throughout are accompanying imagery and the “liturgy” that continues to grow and build throughout the course of the story. Thanks, Thomas Nelson, for letting Josh cook!

Second, I loved the depth and frequency of quotes and references to the great voices of church history who served as guides in Josh’s story (and who could serve as guides in yours!). Chesterton, Lewis, Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, Julian, Nouwen, and Berry are all here — among others! As Josh puts it in the Liturgy of the Every Day Saint, “Learn from those who have walked the Path before, they are guides.”

With awareness that I wade dangerously close to the waters of the John-Mark-Comer-Substack-debate industry, I will say that one thing I appreciate about this book is also a thing I appreciate about JMC’s work: they both make known a lot of great authors and ideas that would likely remain unknown to the masses otherwise — and do so in a manner that can be easily understood. This is, to me, truly Incarnational work.

And with similar awareness that I am treading near to betraying the title and telos of this bite-sized review series, I’ll save my favorite thing about this book for its own (final) section.

Take Up and Read!

I think the best thing about this book is how intimate it is. It’s not a tome of theological truisms. Instead, it’s a deeply personal account of how the deepest theological truths, if truly lived — in daily, human, embodied practice — can genuinely transform the everyday life of a real human being.

It starts off in a place of raw honesty — a place of loss, despair, addiction, distraction, and the failure of trite Christian cliches to do anything to truly address the other members of the list. I felt, at the beginning of the book, in a place akin to the beginning of The Divine Comedy:

Midway upon the path of this our mortal life

I found myself in a dark wood, astray

For the straightforward path had been lost.

And, like Dante, Josh finds in the early pages that the way up is the way down. Things, in some ways, get worse before they get better. Lots of difficulty is required on the path to becoming a saint. Hypocrisy must be abandoned, suffering will be encountered, discipline must be embraced. But all along the way are the whispers of God’s goodness and presence — what Josh calls “the Hidden Music” — Virgil guiding the way.

Of anything else I’ve read, this book is most akin to Augustine’s Confessions — an honest reflection, an earnest prayer, a “saint’s life” showing one powerful example of what it looks like to follow the Way.

The invitation at the end of the book reads as follows:

I’m on the same path as you, still learning the hard way. But there has been a real change in me. I tasted a bit of the flavor of Death, and I also tasted some of the Life to come, and I know which I prefer.

The Hidden Music is everywhere, if we just have ears to hear.

I had come full circle, but my vision had expanded. And that’s the same invitation I now lay before you.

Take a moment to listen, to hear the Hidden Music, and where Jesus might be leading you, all the ways He wants to heal you and transform you, all the ways He wants to make His Kingdom known; and then, have the courage to take a step. To follow.

It will be hard, the hardest thing you ever do, but it will be an adventure, and it will be Good, and it will lead you Home.

This is not a how-to book. It’s not a step-by-step manual for where your own journey needs to go.

But it just may serve as a helpful guide along the path — and it may give you a beautiful picture of what could occur if, through God’s help, you dare to take the first step.

If you’ll permit me one last Augustine reference, go out and get this book; only God knows what may happen when you take up and read!