The Shack

I just finished reading The Shack by William P. Young. This was an AMAZING book! I didn't think I was going to like it at all because I figured if a book about a person's "journey to God" is popular, it must be really non-Biblical. But this one wasn't. It's well-written, interesting, and deeply thought-provoking. The basis for the main character's "journey to God" is his youngest daughter's kidnapping and murder -- another reason I thought that I wouldn't like the book. I'm still having a hard time accepting that part of the book, actually. The key idea of the book is that God is love, and this leads naturally into the concepts of forgiving people, trusting God, not judging people, and loving like God loves. Although there are two incredible paragraphs in the book that touched me in my own personal struggles, the one sentence that I'm taking out of this book to remember forever is something that God said several times to the main character: "I'm especially fond of that person." He said it about several different people; and when asked if there were any person that He wasn't "especially fond" of, He said "no." Just as I'm "especially fond" of each of my children no matter what they have done or will do, God is "especially fond" of every single human being no matter what they have done or will do. Keeping that in mind might just help me follow part of the directions Jesus gave in His "sermon on the mount": "Judge not . . ."