Below Me, The Clouds
Ron Collard
Onwards and Upwards
314 pages, £10.49
ISBN: 1-907509-31-5
Star rating: 5 stars
I found this a fascinating, challenging and in many places a moving read. It is an autobiography and the story of an RAF pilot told with sincere honesty. The author doesn’t gloss over the failures but, consistently throughout his career, gives God the glory for the many successes. Training to be a pilot is meticulous, every detail is vital whether small or great. There is a challenge there for every believer. Our Christian lives are to aim at perfection. Sadly, we are only too aware of our failures, but God who called us out of darkness deserves the best and only the best.
Right at the end of the book, Ron Collard writes: ‘This book is an autobiography, but I would prefer my readers to consider it as a testimony of what the Sovereign Lord can do with, through and in spite of a human being who was a failure from the first and fickle, faithless follower of Christ for most of his life’. That says it all. Indeed, if you read no more, at least read the final pages and particularly the author’s work with MAF. To me, that is the highlight of the book together with the summing up.
The author also testifies to the commitment at every turn of his devoted wife and particularly through a period of deep clinical depression when all he could see was blackness
I highly recommend the book. It will encourage and challenge. As General the Lord Dannatt writes in the Foreword, ‘What shines through the pages of this book is the absolute certainty held by Ron…that a life lived in the service of our Lord Jesus Christ will one day be greeted “above the clouds” with the words of welcome, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”’
Philip Grist,
Abingdon.
