Prayer for Guidance and Meaning

My Lord, to you we surrender our souls and everything we've got, guide us safely to a place where love casts out all fear. Fulfill your work in us and bring your kingdom in our hearts. Stir us and awaken us from our deep sleep and help us remember who we really are. I do not ask you to take away every pain and worry in our lives, but to show us their meaning and with every new meaning, to help us love you even more. I do not ask you to grant us our every wish, but to bring us to a point when our wishes coincide with your will. Keep our candle burning in any weather and never let us forget what a great treasure we have in you. Amen

Life-Changing Books:

"The Shack" by William P. Young

How can a man forgive his father who has abused him as a child? How can a father forgive the serial killer who murdered his 6-year-old little daughter? What revelation can turn the bitterness of a broken heart into joy and peace with the world, God and the self? What amazing experience can heal such painful wounds and replace the horror by faith and love? It must have been something great, something deep, with a huge impact, something coming from far beyond the boundaries of this world. You can find the answer in William P. Young's novel "The Shack", a book that combines a skillfully woven plot with such depth and wisdom that it can't but make its way to the most intimate part of the reader's soul. 

Unconventional and fascinating, captivating and profound, straightforward but subtle and delicate, this novel has all the attributes of a life-changing book. It deals with an old controversial topic and attempts to provide answers to the most burning questions of humanity. But it does it in such an original and charming way that, whether you are a convinced Christian or not, you feel you are taken one step forward on your spiritual journey. 

"The Shack" attempts to reveal the secret face of the true living God and the Holy Trinity. God is not what people have made of Him in their attempt to control their own destiny and protect their vulnerabilities. His image is built gradually around His own words "I am Who I am". Suddenly God appears to us surprising, fresh and new. Ideas we've been used to, things we've been taught to believe for such a long time lose their grip, and other things we've never thought of come into the equation to bring new light to the matter. 

Is God a male or a female? Is God really the stern master portrayed in the Old Testament? Does God have the sense of humour? Does God intervene in human existence? What is the truth about heaven and hell? Why does God allow evil? Can the Holy Spirit alter the dimensions of time and space? These are just a few of the questions that are dealt with in this novel. 

"The Shack" is much more than a best seller or an enjoyable read. It is a living book, one of those inspirational writings you remember and treasure for a long time. There is nothing rigid in it, nothing ostentatious or preaching-like. It teaches without sounding like a sermon. Nothing near. It is a book that opens hearts and minds by challenging the very prejudices that stand in the way of our relationship with God and with one another. 

Links: 

The Shack Book Website

Author's Blog

Look More, See Deeper

A life can change in an instant. One moment we are walking on our cosy, familiar ways, where we take everything for granted, the next we find ourselves in a strange and alien realm without even comprehending how we got there. We can never tell where life is going to take us. Our small universe can grow or become even smaller over night and we can get robbed of everything we hold dear.

What can we take with us over the threshold of pain, losses and fear? What can we cling to when the crazy waves tear us away from the comfortable shore and throw us into a world of chaos and distress? Where can we find our refuge when all our fortresses crumble to the ground?

The answer is not as far as we imagine. It is, in fact, very close to us. We live in a big world, in the middle of a huge universe, full of surprises and unexpected turns. Yet this universe has a Master. The one who created it knows every single corner and every single step. He can go as deep or as high as he wishes, he can see beyond time and space, through darkness or opacity. Nothing is hidden from his eyes and nothing will ever be. The huge waves don't make him hide nor the tough winds make him tremble.

The God in whom we trust and to whom we entrust ourselves is always there, eternal and true, unchanging and unaffraid, forever faithful to the ones who reach out to him. God is not bound by anything but by his own word. The same word that once said: "Let it be light." He created rules and boundaries but he also created the magic world "beyond". He created the "law" but he also gave an alternative to it, an alternative called "grace".

To God nothing is impossible. He put the mountains in their place and ordered them to stay still but he also created the faith that can move mountains. He created the cycle of life but he also created the spirit that can defy the shadows of death. He created everything and he re-created himself, the one who had never been created, in each of ourselves. And in everything he created, he put a little of the love that surrounds him, the love that defines him.

So how can we be oppressed by time when times bows down in front of our friend and our father? How can the circumstances of this life knock us down when we walk hand in hand with the one beyond life and circumstances? How can we be scared of death when the one stronger than death promised he'd be with us forever?

It is all a question of perspective. If we see only here and now, we let ourselves be swallowed by here and now. If we set our mind on earthly things, we cling to them and make them our treasure. And 'Where thy heart is, there shall thy treasure be also.'

So look above and seek beyond, and see God in all. Where there is trust, there is no worry. Where there is faith, there is no fear. Where there is love, there is no falling.

What Christ has done for us

 
Jesus Christ: he has given us the most glorious interpretation of life's meaning that the sons of men have ever had. The fatherhood of God, the friendship of the Spirit, the sovereignty of righteousness, the law of love, the glory of service, the coming of the Kingdom, the eternal hope--there never was an interpretation of life to compare with that. If life often looks as though his interpretation were too good to be true, we need not be surprised. Few things in the universe are as superficially they look. The earth looks flat and, as long as we gaze on it, it never will look any other way, but it is spherical for all that. The earth looks stationary and if we live to be as old as Methuselah we never will see it move, but it is moving--seventy-five times faster than a cannon ball! The sun looks as though it rose in the east and set in the west, and we never can make it look any other way, but it does not rise nor set at all. So far as this earth is concerned, the sun is standing still enough. We look as though we walked with our heads up and our feet down, and we never can make ourselves look otherwise, but someone finding a safe stance outside this whirling sphere would see us half the time walking with our heads down and our feet up. Few things are ever the way they look, and the end of all scientific research, as of all spiritual insight, is to get behind the way things look to the way things are. Walter Pater has a rememberable phrase, "the hiddenness of perfect things." One meaning, therefore, which Christ has for Christians lies in the realm of spiritual interpretation. He has done for us there what Copernicus and Galileo did in astronomy: he has moved us out from our flat earth into his meaningful universe, full of moral worth and hope.

From Christianity and Progress, by Harry Emerson Fosdick