It is an absolutely amazing book. On the front cover it says "Nonreligious thoughts on Christian Spirituality." Its just completely different from anything I've read before. I've only read about a third of the way through it so far, but already there is just so much thought provoking questions and statements that have just leaped off the pages and got stuck in my head.
I think a lot of it has to do with the way the author writes. It's completely honest, and just gives you such an insight into his mind, and his life. The way that he sees the world, and the type of thought process he has about the things that are around him, it's just beautiful. Almost every sentence that I read just makes me want to have an in depth discussion with someone about Christianity, about my relationship with God, or about how I view the world. I think I'm going to definitely have to read this book a couple times just to absorb all that Donald Miller has put into this book.
There is so much I could comment on from what I've read so far. But I think I'll talk about one of the last things I've read.
Donald was struggling to explain why he believed in Jesus and Christianity to a friend who felt that God was "hunting" her down, but she didn't know how to believe. Here is an excerpt from the book...
"My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief. I think Laura was looking for something rational, because she believed that all things that were true were rational. But that isn't the case. Love, for example, is a true emotion, but it is not rational. What I mean is, people actually feel it. I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proved scientifically. Neither can beauty. Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things. There are plenty of things that are true that don't' make any sense. I think one of the problems Laura was having was that she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't. He will make no more sense to me then I will make sense to an ant."
Have you ever had difficulties trying to explain the relationship you have with God to someone? Does the difficultly derive from the fact that you yourself don't know how to make sense of it?
I recently emailed a long-time friend and told her my entire story of why I'm not in school this year. It took me about two and a half months to get up the courage to tell her the entire story. I think that it was because that some fellow Christians who I had told the entire thing to, had difficulties believing what I had told them, or accepting what happened as true. I have no "rational" explanation for the turn of events that my life has been these past several months, and therefore I think it's sometimes hard to explain or to make sense of. But I still know, without a doubt in my mind, that it was God moving in my life, and that's all I need to know. I related to another girl in this book, who is a friend of the authors. She was telling her story of how she became a Christian to Donald, and its a story that is kindof hard to accept as is, as it doesn't make "sense." After telling Don that she had an encounter with God, where she heard Him speak to her, she said "Do you believe me?" and Don replied with "I guess." Then his friend responded with "It doesn't matter whether you believe me or not. That is what happened Don. It was crazy. God said it..." And she continues with her story from there.
As hard as it can be sometimes to explain the miraculous works of God in our lives, when it comes down to it, it doesn't need to make sense. Really, that would be too plain, or too boring, if we could understand the almighty God and His wonderous works just like figuring out a math problem. It's just one of those things, like love, that until you experience and feel what someone is trying to explain to you...it won't make sense. But once you've got that feeling in your gut, you just know. You know that God is real. You know that God is capable of immeasurably more then you could ever imagine.
I think I've kindof gone off on a tangent now, so I'll end this post now. But if you enjoy a good read, and want to be challenged, then I suggest reading this book.
God Bless!
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