paravanes:meditations

Another author takes a stab at the age old question of why a loving, all-powerful God would allow so much suffering. No cutesy answers here, just a real dialogue with a Creator who "looks" and sounds like someone "in the world, but not of it". Young's book doesn't cheat and he leaves you with no easy answers. Instead, he challenges you to consider God has a timetable different from our own. Listen to a booktalk on William P. Young's The Shack here .

Job loss. Divorce. Death of a parent, sibling, or child. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. Serious illness. Tragic accident. Betrayal by a trusted friend. Business failure. Fire or flood. Each of these are "before and after" events. These events force us to evolve into a different person. These events strip a sense of safety and security away from us. These events are painful, gut-wrenching, and they re-order our world. I call them LAEs (life altering events) because no matter how we choose to respond, we are permanently changed by these events. Regardless of who is responsible, we are forced into a new space by these events. Jerry White's I Will Not Be Broken is an easy to read, insightful guidebook for finding the way to wholeness after a tragic loss. In my own experience, the biggest challenge after experiencing a loss is making the firm decision to grow out of the loss and not to sink underneath the weight of it. One of White's guidelines for growing out of a loss is reac

Over this past weekend, I followed and participated in an incredible discussion on another blog . I held a rather unpopular position during the discussion--which is OK--but the tone of the discussion was rather striking to me because as I embraced Christianity, I have understood this decision to mean that I can't do whatever I want and that my personal preferences would be subject to the guidelines of my beliefs. How silly of me to think everyone viewed it that way . I'm increasingly concerned about how credible Christianity will appear to those outside of "the fold." We are under a real challenge to hold ourselves obedient to our own faith. Everyone I know agrees loving your neighbor and forgiving people are good ideas. Who would object to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? Then we get to more unpopular pronouncements from "The Founder": 34"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring