A Thought-Provoking Read

I finally finished reading "The Shack" by Wm. Paul Young last night. I began this relatively short book over a month ago. Holiday preparations and the kids being out of school for 2 weeks just made it hard for me to sit down and really tear into this book. For me, I will admit, it was not an easy read. Perhaps I am not intellectual enough or not spiritual enough. I don't know. I just really wanted it to speak to me. Admittedly, I even grazed over one chapter that was just too deep. I wasn't getting it and I hoped my "grazing" wouldn't affect my grasping future chapters. In the end, I wound up going back and really reading most of that chapter anyway. Self-inflected guilt, I suppose. Ironically enough, some of the words that stuck with me the most were not the actual writings of the author, but rather the quotes he used with each chapter title. Here are the ones that I liked most:

• Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. - Author Unknown (ironic, huh?)
• Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal
• You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. - Frederick Buechner
• An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others. - A. W. Tozer
• Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. - Thomas Moore
• Faith never knows where it is being led but it knows and loves the One who is leading. - Oswald Chambers