The Shack

After reading about it on Leslie's site, I immediately ordered the book The Shack. I read it within 1 day and am blown away by the power of it. The book is about a man whose daughter is abducted and killed. The man receives a letter from God inviting him to go back to the shack where the young girl was killed. Yes this book is about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But it is in a way that you would never imagine. This experience (minus the child getting killed) should happen to all of us!
I strongly urge all of you to purchase this book and read it. It has certainly changed my outlook on a lot of things.

One thing in the book that particularily stood out for me was when the man and Jesus were talking about relationships and how expectations kill relationships, whether it be between friends, spouses, or boss to employee or even with children. How many of us at the beginning of a relationship are all happy and in love and think this person is perfect? Then all of a sudden, we begin having expectations, we expect the person to call us, we expect the person to bring us flowers, we expect them to rescue us, we just expect and expect and expect and when the person does not meet up to our expectations then we are disappointed and hurt and the whole relationship changes or ends and then the person we thought was perfect, is suddenly a jerk.
I am definitely guilty of this one. I have always had expectations of people and have been disappointed and hurt so many times, over time, my heart has hardened and in my eyes all men are jerks. Well, what if from the start I had had no expectations? Then I never would have gotten hurt.

In the book, God appears to this man as a big black woman. I found this amusing as to me those big black women from the south are the ones who have such a zeal for life and for Jesus, they go around singing their hearts out and crying in church at the thought that Jesus loves them and they are not afraid to say it or feel it or live it.

What has happened to the rest of us who barely speak about God for fear of people thinking we are "bible thumpers" or religious freaks. I am certainly guilty of that as well. It seems faith and religion has become a personal private matter kept somewhere deep inside of us not to be mentionned out loud unless you are in church, where not too much of us go anymore anyway.

The book also mentions that we should not be putting God on a pedestal or at the top of our priorities, we should put God at the centre of everything in our lives. While I understand this, how do we put it in practice? That's the part I am struggling with right now, how do we do this?
How does one bring God in all our relationships without freaking others out?

The book is also centred on the healing power of forgiveness. This I can say from experience is so true. Holding a grudge against someone only binds our own heart, once we are able to forgive, what a release it is....Forgiving someone who has harmed us is indeed a difficult thing to do, but in the book, God tells the man to just say it out loud a few times everyday and little by little you will mean it more and more, until one day, you will be completely free of it.

I still like to think of God as the big black woman, there is something about those big black women that is so beautiful and comforting, like if being in their arms resting your head on their chest as they sing "Jesus loves me" to you would somehow make everything ok.

The book also addresses the topic of judgement and how we judge people all the time. They are to fat, too thin, to ugly, too tall, too short, too clumsy, too stupid, etc, etc, ..... We also judge God when something bad happens in our lives, we accuse God of causing bad things to happen, when in reality in the beginning of time, we chose to have our independance from God, and he is honouring that request. But leaving us to have our independance does not mean God is not right there with us. God is always there loving us, even in times when we don't love ourselves.

Anyway, I will leave it at that for now. Read the book and tell me what you think of it. You may discover something you never dreamed of....