The Shack

So there is this book im reading right now called The Shack...and I have yet to finish it, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. Soo...here is a review from Amazon.com just so one can get a feel for the nature of the book..."The Shack" is a one of a kind invitation to journey to the very heart of God. Through my tears and cheers, I have been indeed transformed by the tender mercy with which William Paul Young opened the veil that too often separated me from God and from myself. With every page, the complicated do's and don't that distort a relationship into a religion were washed away as I understood Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the first time in my life. --Patrick M. Roddy, ABC News Emmy Award winning producer

Finally! A guy-meets-God Novel that has literary integrity and spiritual daring. "The Shack" cuts through the cliches of both religion and bad writing to reveal something compelling and beautiful about life's integral dance with the Divine. This story reads like a prayer--like the best kind of prayer, filled with sweat and wonder and transparency and surprise. When I read it, I felt like I was fellowshipping with God. If you read one work of fiction this year, let this be it. --Mike Morrell, zoecarnate.com

When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of "The Shack." This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" did for his. It's that good! --Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.

Product Description
Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

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So as you can see the book talks about pain and hurts and how if that aching in the heart is left too long it can truly separate one from God. Because if you don't allow the Lord to reconcile those emotions and the pain then you get angry and you eventually withdraw...you withdraw from your relationship with God because you feel He should have done something about it, right? HE shouldn't have allowed you to even experience the pain because its just not fair. At least thats how it is for me...lately I have been struggling with past hurts and unresolved pain. I have realized that I have been holding on to so many things ...to disappointments, anger, frustration and I have kept it to myself. I have not allowed the Lord to enter into that place of pain in my life...I think I feel it is easier to be angry and for my heart to ache than it is to deal with the issues at hand. I have yet to allow the Lord to truly heal me and reconcile those hurts, because I truly feel it's impossible and this ache I have will forever exist.

However, the past few weeks at Bethany Community Church have been amazing...the sermon series is centered around the book of James and from that have come soo many inspiring things. The Lord reveals himself to us, but that revelation is no good if we don't respond to it...also words are soo powerful and words can either encourage and empower or strike a person down. Words can be so very important but also so very detrimental. And through words people get hurt...and people disappoint and words sting! These are all things I know, but how do I respond when someone hurts me or lets me down or says something that is not empowering, but rather the opposite? How do you respond when things don't go your way or the way you had hoped for? Do you blame God for it? Or do you see His grace and love in the pain?

So I have yet to finish the book, but must finish it soon as it has to get back to the library...so I am not too sure how it ends yet. But I am imagining the man Mack feels revived and redeemed and allows the Lord into his pain and into his heart and into a relationship with him. Now that's a beautiful thing!