WHAT REALLY MATTERS: What Is Truly Essential to the Authentic Christian Life

Chatty, cheerful, homey meditations blending autobiography and a vaguely defined Christology--mostly predictable inspirational stuff but with a few pleasant surprises. A formidably prolific novelist and devotional writer, with more than 30 books and 15,000,000 copies to her credit, Price wrote this slender volume to celebrate the second, Christian half of her 66 years. She discusses the meaning of (Christian) life in terms of various traditional categories--faith, prayer, growth, praise, service, etc.--to each of which she methodically assigns a chapter. But her overriding theme, for all its unassailable orthodoxy, does stray a bit off the beaten path: what really matters, says Price, ""is the fact of God's eternal commitment to us."" She will have none of the usual up-by-the-bootstraps moralism or leap-in-the-dark faith one finds in such abbreviated popular presentations of Christianity. In 1949 Price experienced a ""light-shot moment in a hotel room"" and gladly exchanged her more or less conventional unbelief for a sunny (but not mawkish), relaxed faith in Jesus. Since then life has had its ups (authorial kudos) and downs (deaths in the family), but through it all she has a sort of steady tactile awareness of Providence. In theology (and politics) Price takes a liberal tack, rejecting churchiness, hypocrisy, and hardline dogmatism. Her vision of the world is not especially profound or challenging, but then neither is it smug or bigoted. And any elderly lady so addicted to the Atlanta Braves that she religiously travels to West Palm Beach every year for spring training can't be all bad. Better than average.