Christianity Today Award of Merit
Meditations on Why Life is Worth Living
We aren't always honest about how difficult normal human life is.
For the majority of people, sorrow, despair, anxiety, and mental illness are everyday experiences. While we have made tremendous advancements in therapy and psychiatry, the burden of living still comes down to mundane choices that we each must make—like the daily choice to get out of bed.
In these pages, you'll find

- Alan Noble's deeply personal yet universally relatable consideration of the unique burden of everyday life,
- Insight that offers hope and challenge without minimizing the reality of ordinary suffering, grief, and mental illness, and
- Noble's ultimate conclusion that the choice to carry on amid great suffering—to simply get out of bed—is itself a powerful witness to the goodness of life, and of God.

Dr. O. Alan Noble (PhD, Baylor University) is associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and a fellow for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He has published articles in The Atlantic, The Gospel Coalition, First Things, and Christianity Today and is the author of three books, most recently, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living. He lives with his wife and three children in Oklahoma City.