Ordinary Altars
How to Love the World (Even When It Breaks Your Heart)
by Sarah Bessey
Available everywhere books are sold on 26 January 2027
You don’t always get to change the world, but you do get to love it.
From “one of our most important progressive Christian voices” (Jen Hatmaker), an urgent invitation to actually love the world even when it breaks your heart.
Many of us were taught to look for God in the extraordinary: in big callings, dramatic transformations, affirmations of constant achievement, or in lives that inspire millions. But what if that way of seeing has left us unable to recognize that God is also present in the everyday—especially now, when headlines are overwhelming, our systems feel broken, and hope seems naïve? What does it mean to actually live a faithful, meaningful life when the world is on fire and nothing turns out as advertised?
Drawing from her own story of faith, disillusionment, motherhood, and decades of work as a spiritual guide, Sarah Bessey believes there comes a time when you decide that being earnest and sincere is better than being defeated. She names what she calls “ordinary altars”: places and people where the holy and the commonplace meet, not as an escape from our daily lives but as full-bodied engagement with the questions of our time and an encounter with the God who is with us in it all. Blending rich storytelling and compassionate spiritual insight, Ordinary Altars is a declaration of choosing stubbornly, again and again, to keep loving your small patch of the world when it would be easier to shut down or walk away or even become what you despise.
For readers who are spiritually tired but still hopeful, deconstructed but longing to rebuild, grappling with despair but determined to make room in their spirituality for the ache in their chest, Ordinary Altars offers honest field notes for a sturdy faith that can bear the weight of the world—rooted in reality, loving defiantly, and being stubbornly faithful enough to make the world feel like home again.
Available on 26 January 2027 everywhere books are sold.
Available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
What People Are Saying
"This is Sarah Bessey’s best work, and I have read every word she has ever written. This will not change the particulars of your life, as those don’t need changing, but you will close the last page having fallen in love with the particular life you are already living. Come to this book exactly as you are, where you live, in the family and body you have, every square inch sacred. Sarah Bessey is a gift to the world."
— Jen Hatmaker, New York Times bestselling author of "Awake" "How do you keep loving the world in the face of despair? When apathy threatens to settle into your bones? These are the questions that keep so many of us awake at night, and Sarah Bessey invites us to engage them with radical honesty in Ordinary Altars. Bessey offers no easy answers, but she does offer us a vision: loving the "small patch" of your own world—the thisness of your own life—is a doorway to learning to love the whole world again. The wisdom Sarah Bessey sets forth on these pages is ancient and ever so timely, inviting us to see with renewed vision that our ordinary, mundane, quotidian lives are sacred, the dwelling place of the Divine, the site where Love blooms in the field of this broken and beautiful world. We need this book more than ever!"
— Drew Jackson, poet and author of "Meditations for the Apocalypse: A Spiritual Companion in Essays and Poems"“Gorgeous, generous, heartfelt. Is this blurb about Ordinary Altars or is it about Sarah Bessey? Yes. She is in these pages who she is in the world: a tender and lovely human walking alongside us, telling us good news every step of the way.”
— Jeff Chu, bestselling author of "Good Soil"“This is the book I wish I had the talent to write; it’s one of the few on my shelf I know I will read repeatedly. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it so deeply affirms humans are at our best when our theology reminds us that Godself is love. Finding the holy in the ordinary and learning to love ourselves, our neighbours, and God more consistently (as best we can) makes the outlook for our future a whole lot better.”
— The Very Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne, 44th Moderator of the United Church of Canada and assistant professor at Emmanuel College “Sarah Bessey writes for every version of us: the wide-eyed child, the optimistic young adult, the worn-out parent, and the heartbroken Christian desperate for reminders that the world is still worth loving. Blending practical spirituality with rich theology, Ordinary Altars leads us to the places where God is present, which is to say everywhere. This exquisite book pastored and mothered me. Protect Sarah Bessey at all costs! We need her voice for the long-haul.”
— Emily P. Freeman, New York Times bestselling author of "How to Walk into a Room""Sarah Bessey has written a field guide on staying tender in a world that wants you to go numb. Ordinary Altars is a stubborn, big-hearted argument that a life you'd never put on a highlight reel is the only kind God ever asked for, and I hate how much I needed it."
— Knox McCoy, author of "All Things Reconsidered" and host of the podcasts The Popcast with Knox and Jamie and Shelf Respect“Sarah Bessey evokes poetic and powerful tenderness, and calls us forward and into the depths of what our lives are really about: the sacred moments that never ask us to give up on ourselves or love in this world. Sarah gives us this invitation with every lit candle, every chapter, every word. May we take it.”
— Kaitlin B Curtice, award-winning author of "Native" and "Everything Is a Story"“When Sarah Bessey speaks, I listen. When she writes, I read. This latest long-form love letter from her is so rich that you'll read it too quickly if you're not careful. My advice is to linger in these pages instead, noticing how intimately she honors the God under the rubble of this world as well as the God under the kitchen table, leaving none of us any excuse for thinking we are far from the divine heart of things.”
— Barbara Brown Taylor, author of "Learning to Walk In The Dark"“This is Sarah Bessey's best book yet. Bracing insight, warm wisdom, and a strong shove back into God's embarrassing love. I needed this book more than I knew. Who else could ask us to love this ordinary, aching world, and mean it?”
— Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of "Joyful Anyway" and host of Everything Happens“Bestseller Bessey … issues a sincere call for believers to keep their faith amid rising tides of “fear and despair and distrust.” Reassuring readers that “God can bring beauty out of the coldest ashes,” she recommends swapping apathy for hope by loving life’s “ordinary altars”—places where “the holy and commonplace intersect... and some part of your soul glimpses reality.” Doing so is not a means of ignoring reality but of honoring how deeply God loves creation, she writes. But loving the world also involves working to improve it in small ways, like picking up trash, making art, or pushing for legislative reform—actions that have the added benefit of guarding against despair. The author interweaves her wise insights with affecting personal anecdotes, recalling how enduring a car accident nearly 15 years ago forced her to slow down and appreciate, amid her suffering, valuable everyday experiences like spending time with her children. This will inspire Bessey’s fans and win her some new ones.”
— Publishers WeeklyAvailable for preorder
Ordinary Altars is now available for preorder at your local and/or independent bookstores as well as these online retailers:
Ordinary Altars: A Guided Journal
This companion journal invites you to weave the heart of Sarah Bessey’s Ordinary Altars into your everyday—a guided journey through the work of living a faithful, meaningful life when the world is on fire and nothing has turned out as advertised.
Also available on 26 January 2027
This companion journal invites you to weave the heart of Sarah Bessey’s Ordinary Altars into your everyday—a guided journey through the work of living a faithful, meaningful life when the world is on fire and nothing has turned out as advertised.
In Ordinary Altars: A Guided Journal, you will journey through the ordinary altars of your life—those unseen, uncelebrated places where God is present in the everyday—especially now, when headlines are overwhelming, our systems feel broken, and despair seems like the wiser choice. These pages are your invitation to engage with the realities of the world around us and decide to love the world anyway, whether you’re rebuilding faith after deconstruction, weary from performance-driven spirituality, or simply seeking a truer way of being with God.
Through thoughtful prompts, reflection questions, storytelling exercises, and accessible spiritual practices,
you will explore how to love our place, our people, and our limitations with courage. You’ll make space for lament, rediscover joy in the regular, and learn to see your own stories as the defiant choice and act of protest that loving can be in the world.
Ordinary Altars: A Guided Journal doesn’t promise a formula for faith—but it does offer the humble, healing work of showing up to your life and finding that God is already there.
Available in paperback and ebook.
Ordinary Altars: A Guided Journal is now available for preorder at your local and/or independent bookstores as well as these online retailers: