‘Love Does’

Book Review

by Patti Richter

Love Does

Non-fiction book by Bob Goff

Bob Goff put his life stories in a book at the urging of friends, who probably weren’t surprised when it became a bestseller.

Goff’s first book, Love Does, is dressed in a sky-blue jacket featuring a balloon release. The 225-page book (Thomas Nelson, 2012) is a bit of a memoir, but mostly vignettes of the author’s somewhat risky adventures, with spiritual analogies readers can easily catch.

Passion for purposeful living drives the author, who combines “the ‘do’ part of faith along with doing something worth doing.” His words gush out like a well-primed pump. His book is easy to read for that reason, but hard to read for another. It can trouble those of us with good intentions for taking light and hope to the world, though we haven’t much ventured beyond our safe, comfortable status-quo.

We get a bit of a pass though, as we realize that Goff is a unique soul. His impulsive personality and notions (whimsy is his favorite word) call to mind the film hero, Absent Minded Professor. He’s eccentric, for sure. His youthful stunts ripened into incredible flights of fancy, like taking his children to meet heads of state, and sailing a small boat from L.A. to Oahu, with a crew that knew nothing about navigation.

Goff became a lawyer—by God’s grace as readers discover—to make a difference in the world. Readers will be amazed to see how that goal is working out. His work inspire us, but it’s his leaps of faith that captivate us—like getting kids out of brothels in India, and visiting jails around Uganda to represent children whose petty theft cases have been long forgotten. Goff eventually established Restore International to give a voice to oppressed children of the world.

Humor throughout Love Does helped alleviate a nagging question the book made me ask: Am I doing all I can do with my life? This is not to say that Goff puts himself on a platform for readers to emulate. He shares his messy stories too, letting us know that God can use anyone, and says: “It has always seemed to me that broken things, just like broken people, get used more; it’s probably because God has more pieces to work with.”

Each chapter contains a great aphorism, like: “I used to think I could shape the circumstances around me, but now I know Jesus uses circumstances to shape me,” and “I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”

Blue Ribbon News special contributor Patti Richter of Heath is a journalist who writes news and feature stories, book reviews and more for Christian publications.