Log #1

Book: The Shack

Author: William P. Young

Page: p1~70

This is the synopsis on the back of the book:  

Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in this midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. 

Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change his life forever.

     There are two reasons why I pick up this book : 1. Because there are so many friends, no matter they are Christian or not, recommend this book to me. 2. And I guess this book can lead me to think more about the relationship between Human and God in Christianity. As a Christian, it is one of the most important issues I concerned about, a theme that will consistently appear in my life, and a question I will be inquired by others all the time.

     This week, I read about the story of The Great Sadness to Mack and what changes it brought to him. He had been buried in grief since he lost his beloved daughter. He ate, worked, loved, dreamed, and played in this garment of heaviness. And the tragedy had also increased the rift in Mack’s own relationship with God. More specifically, it was due to the fact that Mack couldn’t accept that the God who he had always believed in allowed the tragedy happen. It made him become hard to trust in God and consequently choose to embrace a stoic, unfeeling faith. To Mack, even the religious social clubs or the Sunday prayers couldn’t make any real difference. 

     But now, the suspicious note that probably was sent by God, seeming to give him a chance to solve the questions from the bottom of his heart.

     Besides, the great sadness that Mack had underwent made me think about a few things:

There must be much more people who also encountered similar or more serious misery in their lives. Could it be an unchanging fate that we should live a more painful life because of those miseries? I think it certainly is not the truth. In my way of thinking, how we control our thoughts may definitely change our life. As the saying goes, “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”


Picture from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shack#/media/File:Shackover.jpg