I Finally Read It (Now I’m Recommending It)

Most people know I’m an avid reader and lead a book club, and they often come up to me and ask, “Have you read ______________?” With this particular book, it got to where I would finish the sentence for them and say, “The Shack? No. Not yet.” So many asked.

I put off starting it a long time, even though I had heard such positive reviews of it. The premise of this fictional story is a difficult, tragic subject matter and that was the main reason I lacked the enthusiasm to start it.

It wasn’t until one of my own teenage sons read it in 3 days and begged me to read it that I couldn’t put it off any longer. In an age of video games and movies, when your kids get this enthusiastic about a book, you take note.

Wow. I wish I’d had this book when I was younger.

Did you ever have a great teacher who helped you to learn without even trying because they were so good at explaining? Their enthusiasm was contagious.

That’s the way this book reads. I felt I was receiving an explanation of theological concepts (specific to my interest, the Trinity) which in the past made me feel like I was trying to grasp at air. As I read, I kept saying to myself: “That makes sense.” “I get that.” “Why didn’t I ever think of it that way?”

And I was saying: “When you look at it that way, it’s so beautiful.”

For me, one of the most intriguing talks between the Holy Spirit and the main character, Mack, surrounded a fractal.

A fractal in The Shack is described as, “something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex.” When the Holy Spirit shows Mack a fractal, he says it just looks like a mess to him. She tells 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 process. To you it seems like a mess but to me, I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive – a living fractal.”

I don’t mind telling you I was very late in coming into a relationship with the Holy Spirit in my own life and it’s one I’m still working on. The Shack confirmed for me so much of what I am only just beginning to learn about the amazing gift of the Holy Spirit. The simplest way I can think to say it is that the Holy Spirit is my Helper.

In another point in the story, God tells Mack,
“You try to make sense of the world in which you live based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality. It is like looking at a parade through the tiny knothole of hurt, pain, self-centeredness, and power and believing you are on your own and insignificant.”

We need the lenses of Holy Spirit to guide our heart’s eyes, to keep us from being limited by that same knothole perspective. It’s hard to see the pattern behind the “mess.” But with the Holy Spirit as our guide and helper, God’s full purpose for each life eventually comes into being.

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You can see more information on fractals here, (which can get highly mathematical and endlessly fascinating but hurt my brain after just a little research). I had fun creating my fractal art, but suspect it’s not quite mathematical or self-similar enough to be a true fractal. Oh well, it's "purty." :0)