"Shack" insights

This week, the senior high girls church youth group book club I'm leading wrapped up our discussion on William Paul Young's "The Shack." We all agreed that it made us think about religion, spirituality and our own faith differently. During my haircut Saturday, I told my stylist about it, and she's already added it to her book list. (One of the fun things about our appointments is that we always manage to wind up chatting about the latest books we've read. She recommended that I check out "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow.)

In "Shack," one of my favorite parts was from Chapter 9 when the author makes an analogy of our souls and a lovely disarray of a garden, which the main character Mack is able to see because of a stroke of divine intervention:

"It was chaos in color. His eyes tried unsuccessfully to find some order in this blatant disregard for certainty. Dazzling sprays of flowers were blasted through patches of randomly planted vegetables and and herbs, vegetation the likes of which Mack had never seen. It was confusing, stunning, and incredibly beautiful."

Mack learns that an omnipotent gardener is at work, tending, pruning and perfecting him:

"This mess is you! Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart. And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in progress. To you it seems like a mess, but to me, I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive ... "