If you don’t know the plot of The Shack, you will want to stop reading this devotion until after you read/watch the movie.
In The Shack, Mack allows his outrage at the murder of his daughter to sink deep into his soul. It permeates his being so much so that he ends up in “The Great Sadness.”
Sometimes we hear preachers/religious leaders say, “When bad things happen to us we should give thanks to God because it is part of his great plan to bring about a greater good for his own glory.”
Who would want a God like that?
We find ourselves thinking, “If God couldn’t take care of that, then can God take care of me?”
Mack’s sadness “had draped itself around his shoulders like some invisible but almost tangible heavy quilt. The weight of its presence dulled his eyes and stooped his shoulder” (p. 27).
One of the components of our humanity is our ability (or inability) to move through different feelings in our lives.
We experience joy . . .
We experience peace . . .
We experience hope . . .
We experience sadness . . .
We experience anger . . .
We experience pain . . .
God’s desire for us is never for us to live with sadness draping itself around us like a quilt. One of the beautiful things about a relationship with God is God is there to take away the sadness . . . even if it means filling us with a fortitude that we did not know existed. Sometimes, that is how we move through the sadness, anger, and pain so that we begin controlling it instead of it controlling us.
What can you remove from your shoulders and give to God today?
To Love, to Be Loved
1 John 4:
17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day-our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life-fear of death, fear of judgment-is one not yet fully formed in love.