Keep the Fire! By Don Anderson. Foreword by Dr. Howard Hendricks. Sisters, OR: Multnomah Books, 1994. 288 pp. Paper, $8.99.
The present reviewer has no trouble reading small print, but admittedly does belong to what the author calls “approaching your senior years.” Anderson has a masters degree in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and a doctorate in marriage and family counseling from Talbot School of Theology. For 20 years the emphasis of his ministry has been working with senior adults. This may explain the large, clear, black type and good margins in this book: he’s sensitive to the needs of others.
Many people (especially men) look forward to retirement for years and then, soon after it arrives, hate it as boring and worthless. Many die soon after retirement because they feel they’re no use to anyone.
Anderson’s well-organized book for Christian men and women is jam-packed with true stories, ideas, principles on how to really make the decades labeled “senior” by the media, fruitful, fun, and full of flavor!
Many people need to find out the facts and truths in this book. For example, how many know that Michelangelo, Ben Franklin, Churchill, Schweitzer, Grandma Moses, Colonel Sanders, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and Ronald Reagan made major contributions to society in their 70s, 80s, and, in Stagg’s case, even the 90s? (pp. 23-24).
Dr. Anderson wants all Christians to keep going on for God in the many ways he suggests, even when we’re of “retirement age”—and well beyond.
This book will be helpful to Christian “senior citizens” who may be “over the hill” in the estimate of modern Western culture. They can be getting their “mansion over the hilltop” pre-furnished with rewards for good works done even when (dare we use the word?) “old.” The author clearly believes that a real believer (he cites Demas, 2 Tim 4:10) can make the wrong choice and “live for the temporal instead of the eternal” (p. 269).
His last paragraph gives his philosophy of life for senior believers: “My prayer for you and me as we mature is that the vision and passion for a strong finish will intensify, and that absolutely nothing will stop us from doing it up right. Press on, persevere, and point toward home. Oh to be able to shout with the Savior, ‘Tetelestai!—It is finished!’ so that the watching throng knows we gave it our best shot” (p. 278).
Arthur L. Farstad
Editor
Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Dallas, TX
