Glimmers
July 23, 2009
Vacations are prime reading times for me. I usually pick up a book or two and knock them out in pretty short order. I read “Stone Cold” by David Baldacci. It is a political thriller set in Washington and, as usual, Baldacci was highly entertaining. Then I did something I don’t recall doing with any other book. I read The Shack by Wm Paul Young for the third time. Once I have read a book, I rarely have the urge to read it again. But I like so many things about this book; how it depicts the relationality of God, how it handles questions of meaning like, “If God loves me so much, why is my life such a mess?” or “If God has any power at all, how could he have allowed this to happen?” or “Does anything I do really matter?”
When I was a local church pastor, I sometimes thought about how great it would be to be a carpenter, or brick mason, or a mechanic. So much of what I did produced no immediately obvious results. How nice it would be to able to see the walls I had built go up or hear the engine I had tuned purring perfectly. “Does what I do matter,” I wondered. I suspect you have wondered that too at times, maybe even today. But then someone would wait for me at the church door and say, “Thank you, Pastor.” “That was just what I needed.”
In The Shack, Mack, the lead character asks that same cosmic question. “Is what I do back home important?” “Does it matter?” I love the reply. “If anything matters, everything matters.” “Because you are important, everything you do is important.” “Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again,”( p. 237).
It is the purest of logic. It is the simplest of statements. It is the deepest of truths. If anything matters, you matter.
Blessings to you all,
Jerald
