I have an autistic son who is now 30 years old.  His illness is the thing that has brought me to my knees.  Problems caused by his disorder still continue to bring struggle and tears.  Years ago, it brought rage and rant toward God.  Sometimes, I still ask “why?”

When I first heard of the book, “The Shack”, I checked it out.   I’m not revealing anything about the book that isn’t on the cover, so I’ll tell you that it is the story of a man whose child is murdered, who gets an invitation from “God” to meet “God” at the place where his child was murdered.  I dropped that book like a hot rock.  I don’t read anything in which a child is hurt.  Particularly fiction.  Life is painful enough, I don’t need to read fiction about it.  But some Christian friends continued to recommend the book.  When I discovered a copy of the book on CD, I decided to try to listen to it.  It was hard to get through the first part of the book.  Particularly now, when the news is full of stories of exploited, missing and murdered little girls.  The things that can happen in this world are beyond sick. And it sickened me to think of what happened to the child in the story, and to realize that it really does happen in the world.  And I joined all the parents in the world who ask, or scream, “WHY?”

And then the father in the book meets “God”, and the healing begins.  I had to purchase my own copy of the book, and I read it with tissues and highlighter and journal.  Many is the time I’ve tried to discern the hand of a loving Father in my son’s life; when he has been hospitalized, arrested, jailed, institutionilized and injured.  When my son’s illness can cause so much pain in our family, and so many tears, and so many questions, I can certainly identify with the father in “The Shack” in his struggle.

The book blessed me.  Like the father in the book, I also have “father issues”, and I have found it hard to deal with the idea of God as a father.  I fell in love with the God that Mac met in the book.  Of course the book is fiction.  It is one man’s idea of God.  But this book offered new ways to look at my “God concept”.  I share my faith with other people, and they share their faith with me.  My life in an ongoing learning about the God I believe in, and I need the ideas of other people.  I need to stretch my mind beyond it own tiny reach.  I consider new concepts in the light of the Bible, and I didn’t find anything in “The Shack” that disagreed with Scripture.  It only enhanced it.

If, like me, you have asked or shouted, “Why!?!” toward the heavens, you won’t find an answer in “The Shack”.  But you may find peace.  And sometimes peace is enough.  And I can breathe again.

Sometimes it is really difficult to approach God.   So many people seem to have an idea of what a Christian is, or what their God wants them to be, and they try to live up to that idea.  They perform and pretend, and hope that they are acceptable–meanwhile they are missing out on a genuine relationship with God.   We hear that Jesus is coming to visit–He’s knocking on the door!  And we run around like maniacs cleaning up the front room.  ”Just a minute, Jesus–I’ll be right there!”  and we shove things in the closet.  We don’t get it that Jesus is there to help us clean up our house.  

I could not begin to have a genuine relationship with Jesus until I began to see myself as the little lost sheep and Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  I had, by my own efforts, gotten myself so lost.  I could not save myself.  I had no strength.  I couldn’t be anything other than what I was; and that was not enough.  I could no longer pretend that I was able to fix myself.                                                                                                                                               A woman at a retreat gave me a wonderful picture of the Good Shepherd coming to save a sheep perched on a precipice.  The picture was my story!  And the Shepherd was coming!  I wept over that picture; and began to hope.  Then I found a wonderful book by Phillip Keller, which had four of his bestselling works in one volume.  One of them was “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23″.  Another one was “A Shepherd Looks at the Good Shepherd and His Sheep”.  This book was tremendously helpful to me.  I’m a sheep–that’s what I am.  He’s the Shepherd–that’s what He is.  I belong to Him.  He takes care of me.  This works.