What a weekend!! It's like I have been on this "high" all weekend...thank goodness I have Monday off to recuperate. Friday afternoon we drove 2 hours to a retreat center for our annual Watershed Leadership Retreat. (Watershed is the name of our church.) We have about 75+ leaders that are in this core group. I LOVE this group of people...more like a giant family. It was an amazing time of worship together, teaching, vulnerability of confessed brokenness, eating, laughing, more teaching...it was just amazing.
Each year our pastor's assign a book for us to read in the months leading up to the retreat. Last year was "Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne, an amazing read see previous post. This year it is the much acclaimed book "The Shack" by William P. Young. WOW...if you haven't read the book yet please put it at the top of your list!! The book is a novel and was originally written as a Christmas gift for the author's 5 children...can you imagine if your father wrote a whole book?? Crazy. The author's wife urged him to publish it and has now hit the top 10 best seller list. Young was interviewed on Good Morning America last week. The book has a ton of metaphor's, which I love...its like the author put words and pictures to deep theological questions that people have been asking for so long, especially in relation to the Trinity and the major question people ask often, "why do bad things happen to good people".
So...back to the retreat. Saturday morning our pastors had a surprise for us. They Skyped in Paul Young, the author of "The Shack" for a 10 minute interview. It was something I will never forget!!! What a great gift.
Paul answered the questions with such humility and generosity. One of the questions that was asked was if Paul had great significance in the names that were given to the characters. One of my favorite things that he described was the name that he gave to the Holy Spirit. He gave the name "Sarayu". He explained on Saturday that the name "Sarayu" was the Hindi word for "wind". (You know I love anything Hindi and Indian.) He went on to explain that there are actually many words in Hindi that describe "wind" but "sarayu" actually means "the common wind that catches you by surprise". Isn't that great and so true? Many times in my life it seems that the Holy Spirit has swept in me with great surprise...teaching me, comforting me, loving me, guiding me, speaking to me. The Holy Spirit will now always be "Sarayu" to me...I will never forget.
His parting quote to our leadership was "Learn to live inside one day of GRACE at a time"
One of the my many favorite excerpts from the book (pg. 97)
"Consider our little friend here," she began. "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."
Mack nodded his head, not so much in full agreement, but more as a signal that at least he understood and was tracking. That seemed simple enough.
"Unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you."
3 comments:
Jamie, I finished reading that book last week and loved it! I loved the analogies with the Trinity. It was definitely a book I couldn't put down until I was finished. I'm glad to hear you loved it too.
I'm glad you blogged about this book. I got it for Ryan for Christmas and he had mixed feelings about it. He thought it was good but not great and I was nervous about reading it b/c of what happens to the child in the beginning. I've been worried that it would make me too upset, but I think I'm going to read it now that you blogged about it.
Sounds like a very cool retreat!
I have GOT to get this book...I have been hearing about it for months and months now...
Post a Comment