The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity

by William Paul Young

The thing is, he usually makes uncomfortable sense in a world where most folks would rather just hear what they are used to hearing, which is often not much of anything.

He sells something high-tech and gadgety that I don’t pretend to understand: techno gizmos that somehow make everything go faster, as if life weren’t going fast enough already.

I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships, so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.

help them understand what had been going on in his inside world. You know that place: where there is just you alone—and maybe God, if you believe in him. Of course, God might be there even if you don’t believe in him. That would be just like him. He hasn’t been called the Grand Interferer for nothing.

was becoming inexorably trapped as an ice-prisoner in his own home—much to his delight.

He ate, worked, loved, dreamed, and played in this garment of heaviness, weighed down as if he were wearing a leaden bathrobe—trudging daily through the murky despondency that sucked the color out of everything.

The oldest medicine man among them spoke of how his own father, when aged and near death, had foretold of a terrible sickness that would kill their men, an illness that could be stopped only if a pure and innocent daughter of a chief would willingly give up her life for her people. In order to fulfill the prophecy, she must voluntarily climb to a cliff above the Big River and from there jump to her death onto the rocks below.

Nocculula falls ??

He was a rich man, he thought to himself, in all the ways that mattered.

Of all the places he sensed the presence of God, out here, surrounded by nature and under the stars, was one of the most tangible. He could almost hear the song of worship they sang to their Creator, and in his reluctant heart he joined in as best he could.

“Sweetheart, Jesus didn’t think his Daddy was mean. He thought his Daddy was full of love and loved him very much. His Daddy didn’t make him die. Jesus chose to die because he and his Daddy love you and me and everyone in the world. He saved us from our sickness, just like the princess.”

“Well,” he said, forcing another laugh, “life is hard sometimes, but I have a lot to be thankful for.”

There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational.

I guess part of me would like to believe that God would care enough about me to send a note.

He had always heard that the nose was the best link to the past, that the olfactory sense was the strongest for tapping into forgotten history, and now some long-stored remembrances of his own childhood flitted through his mind.

And how should he address him? Should he call him “Father,” or “Almighty One,” or perhaps “Mr. God,” and would it be best if he fell down and worshiped? Not that he was really in the mood.

“It’s okay, honey, you can let it all out… I know you’ve been hurt, and I know you’re angry and confused. So, go ahead and let it out. It does a soul good to let the waters run once in a while—the healing waters.”

we all have things we value enough to collect, don’t we?” His little tin box flashed through his mind. “I collect tears.”

“Oh”—now Jesus was serious—“don’t go because you feel obligated. That won’t get you any points around here. Go because it’s what you want to do.”

I listen to everything—and not just to the music itself, but the hearts behind it.

At that she put down the mixing bowl that had been cradled in her arm, and, leaving the wooden spoon in it, she turned toward Mack with tender eyes. She didn’t have to say it; he knew she understood what was going on inside him, and somehow he knew she cared about him more than anyone ever had.

“If you let me, Mack, I’ll be the papa you never had.”

I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later… when you’re ready.”

For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me ‘Papa’ is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.” She leaned forward as if to share a secret. “To reveal myself to you as a very large, white grandfather figure with flowing beard, like Gandalf, would simply reinforce your religious stereotypes, and this weekend is not about reinforcing your religious stereotypes.”

And then there’s advertising, propaganda, and paradigms. Inside that confluence of multifaceted inhibitors,” she said, sighing, “what is freedom really?”

“Don’t ever think that what my Son chose to do didn’t cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark,” she stated softly and gently. “We were there together.”

when all you can see is your pain, perhaps then you lose sight of me?”

“Don’t forget, the story didn’t end in his sense of forsakenness. He found his way through it to put himself completely into my hands. Oh, what a moment that was!”

“Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around.” She paused to let Mack think about her statement. “You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around.”

The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much, and then calling that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I’m not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.”

“When we three spoke ourselves into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird, whose nature it is to fly, choosing only to walk and remain grounded. He doesn’t stop being a bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly.”

Interesting

“But what about all the miracles? The healings? Raising people from the dead? Don’t those prove that Jesus was God—you know, more than human?” “No, it proves that Jesus is truly human.” “What?” “Mackenzie, I can fly, but humans can’t.

“He did so as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.”

So, when you look at Jesus and it appears that he’s flying, he really is… flying. But what you are actually seeing is me, my life in him. That’s how he lives and acts as a true human, how every human is designed to live—out of my life.

“The God who is—the I am who I am—cannot act apart from love!”

You don’t play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship. You will even lose a competition to accomplish love. It is not about winning and losing, but about love and respect.”

Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to hold power over another is to choose to limit oneself—to serve.

This presence-of-God thing, although hard to grasp, seemed to be steadily penetrating past his mind and into his heart. He let it go at that.

never get tired of this.” “Even though you created it?” Mack asked. “I created it as the Word, before the Word became flesh. So even though I created this, I see it now as a human. And I must say, it is impressive!”

But Papa isn’t at all what I expected from God, and Sarayu, she’s way out there.”

Haha typical response to the Holy Spirit

“I am the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu. To see me is to see them.

“Right where you were always intended to be. In the very center of our love and our purpose.”

Mack lay there a few seconds and realized that as much as he thought he knew Jesus, perhaps he didn’t… not really. Maybe what he knew was an icon, an ideal, an image through which he tried to grasp a sense of spirituality, but not a real person.

But don’t think that just because I’m not visible, our relationship has to be less real. It will be different, but perhaps even more real.”

“It’s what everything is all about. The human, formed out of the physical material of creation, can once more be fully indwelt by spiritual life, my life. It requires that a very real dynamic and active union exists.”

Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. —Author Unknown

I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”

it was how they related. He had never seen three people share with such simplicity and beauty. Each seemed totally aware of the others rather than of himself.

“Though chains be of gold, they are chains all the same.”

“Don’t confuse adaptation with intention, or seduction with reality.”

So then we’ve been seduced into this preoccupation with authority?”