The Shack -- not mine for a change!

Cover of the paperback best-seller, The Shack

If there is any "miracle" within the pages of a simple [sic] piece of fiction, it is the lifting of the depression I've felt for days over such unimportant matters as the likelihood of losing my job this Spring, the trash bin into which my own "shack" has evolved and numerous other little (truly LITTLE) matters relating to me, my family and my friends.

Essentially, The Shack tells a fictional story of a man who loses his youngest daughter to a deranged killer during a camping trip in eastern Oregon.

As it evolves, the kidnapper-murderer turns out to be an infamous serial killer known to have abducted at least a half dozen children. The horror of the abduction and murder causes the father to seriously question his faith, and it isn’t until a few years later when he receives a letter--presumably from God--that he travels back to the shack where his daughter's blood-stained dress was found.

It is when he arrives at the shack that he encounter "God" in a manner that will disturb those Fundamental Christians who believe that God can only be found in the pages of the King James Version of the Bible.

Nevertheless (and yes, I am "addicted" to reading one or another version of the same Bible that was read by Billy Graham, most televangelists and quite a few of my students--not exactly model Christians through their lives), I found myself deeply moved by a story that I can only believe was inspired by The Holy Spirit--in every way.

I'm somewhat amazed to learn that the book is a best-seller in that it has been largely ignored by both Fundamentalist Christians and Oprah's New Age groupies as well.

Maybe that's the miracle!

Read it!