Book Review: Holy Nomad

It was in the dim light of his basement that an old watercolor caught his eye—a wash that portrayed a dusty path and a lone rugged-looking nomad ascending it. Matt Litton was down in that dark wrestling with questions—questions brought on by the realization of a joy-deficit in his life.

What does your faith really matter? How are you moving forward? Where is your Joy?

I must admit there have been times I’ve asked the same. Times when my ordinary life and the work I do fade into a blur and the meaning seems lost somewhere between Sunday and that report that needs written today.

I was right there with Matt in his basement, surrounded by old mementos and forgotten bits of life, studying the footprints in that watercolor, when we heard a disturbance upstairs—the scuttle of his children’s feet, their laughter, the echo of his wife’s voice.

…The energy and progression above me seemed to accompany the painting and I sensed a symphony of Joy in the route of those footprints...I imagined placing my feet on his path…I could hear a voice beckoning me in a familiar tone…

And isn’t this what we all want? That sense of joy in the journey?

That moment in the basement opened Matt’s eyes to the ways our spiritual lives can be a call to a journey. Holy Nomad: The Rugged Road to Joy is his new book that explores those thoughts.

…opening the Bible, we discover a main character whose message is painted in the compulsion to move forward, a God who walks our dusty roads in human skin and speaks frequently of the rich journey we can experience if we will simply follow; a way of living tethered securely to qualities that last forever, a grace grounded in going, a condition of living called “life to the fullest.” It sounds rather remarkable…but very distant…almost foreign.

In Holy Nomad Matt Litton does not suggest we abandon our current lives and take up some wandering spiritual pilgrimage. Rather, the metaphor of the nomad drives home that fact that being faithful right where we are is a mark of the spiritual nomad who is constantly moving closer to Jesus—the true Nomad.

The Way of the Nomad isn’t about physical mobility as much as it is the location and openness of your heart for others…Jesus tells us that when we become nomads we begin to take on the qualities of God. We are to be free to move out of our cells and into this new adventure. The greatest reflections of our true lives are found … in the lives of the people who live closest to us. We are to be defined by our journey with Him.

Divided into seven movements (short sections) that take us from a life focused on all the wrong things to the tools needed to move closer to Jesus, the importance of community, and finally arriving at joy—Holy Nomad awakens awareness of the abundant life available to us as we move closer to Jesus in everyday living.

Because we are nomads, our shoes may comfortably walk the warm and familiar sidewalks of the same neighborhood each day of our life. Our souls will be dusty and road-worn from carrying light across eternal landscapes to the people who need it most. Our clothes may always appear laundered and pressed, we may never don a burlap toga, but the robes of our spirit will be tugged and frayed from reaching out to the neediest corners of the world. Our bodies may be broken, exhausted, or terminally sick, but our hearts will be sustained by the deep Joy of the Holy Nomad.

Each dusty step taken in faith places us that much closer to Jesus—closer to who we were made to be, Litton says. Because even the life that looks ordinary to the outsider can be a wild journey to joy when the Holy Nomad is our guide.

Thank you to Abingdon Press for the complimentary copy of this book used for this review.