Book Review: A Day’s Journey, by Tim Keesee

Tim Keesee, A Day’s Journey: Stories of Hope and Death-Defying Joy. Bethany House Publishers, 2023. 240 pages.

What does it mean to number our days?

This question can feel poetic, slightly out of reach, just off the beaten track of our normal days. Yet it is one of the most pressing questions for every human being.

Down to the Engine Room

The title of Tim Keesee’s latest book, A Day’s Journey, comes from an ancient measure of distance; a traveler could walk approximately 25 miles a day. In three sections—Setting Out, Along the Way, and Toward Evening—Keesee gives us a written picture album from a lifetime of traversing the globe, meeting fellow soldiers, hearing their stories, and living his own.

In this powerful, narrative-style examination of what gives meaning to life, Keesee draws on history, literature, relationships, experience, and the Word of God. Existential questions surround us all, but we often mask them by the distractions and busyness of life. Keesee takes us below deck to give us a glimpse of what faithfulness has meant in the engine room of his own life and those of other courageous men and women.

How They Number

What ties together a quadriplegic who whisper-sings hymns at night, a couple who houses refugees and rescues sex slaves in Greece, a former LBGTQ activist-turned-pastor’s-wife, and a mom who writes music? In the pages of this book, you will find stories of men and women who were captivated by the grand vision of the gospel and give up their days gladly in pursuit of Christ’s glory.

“In seeing how they number their days,” Keesee writes, “I’ve learned better how to spend mine. . . . All of them have things to teach us about how we will spend the precious bits of our vapor life—the endurance we need, the joy we have, the gospel we love, the cross we bear, and the hope we embrace until faith becomes sight” (22–23).

The surprising thing about these heroes? They look a lot like you and the people in your churches. Some stories may be intimately familiar to you as a reader, while others will help you better understand the thoughts, emotions, and wrestlings of those walking a different road.

Neither Keesee nor the people who fill his pages set out to make history or do heroic things. They looked to Christ, believed his Word, and clung to it because they saw there was no other rock toward which to steer their frail vessel in the gales of life. They did what we as believers are called to do in “making our calling and election sure” (2 Pet. 1:10).

How We Testify

As we walk through the trials assigned to us, we must learn not only to walk by faith rather than sight, but also how to testify to our Father’s faithfulness through them. After all, the “Father of mercies and God of all comfort” comforts us in our afflictions with a purpose: “so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:3–4).

In this book, Keesee invites us into his own night of the soul. He gives us an example of white-knuckled faith as it clings to God through weakness, pain, and nausea in dark hospital hallways and on early spring days. “These days are not filtered, photoshopped images . . . but instead ones that show life with all its pressing demands and unanswered questions, so that the silver thread of God’s grace might be seen all the more as it runs through the routines of their days” (22–23).

More than most, pastors have a front row seat to the brokenness of the world. This book provides categories for testifying to the wisdom and care of our God both in simple, good gifts and startling trials.