Shattered Dreams by Larry Crabb

Author:Larry Crabb [Crabb, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82266-6
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

COUNTING ON GOD

Suppose you had been a trusted confidante to Rachel, someone whom she asked to read her poem. What might you have said after reading it? More important, what view of life would have determined your response?

If you believe life is supposed to work well enough for people to feel good, you would have been alarmed by a struggle you could not explain. You might have encouraged her to trust in the God who loved her to make her dreams come true. If she couldn’t respond to that encouragement, you might have referred her for counseling.

But suppose you were convinced of a very different understanding of life. Suppose you believe God is not committed to making our lives work well enough for us to feel good. What would you say then? Perhaps something like this:

“Rachel, your pain is legitimate. You’ve discovered the part of your soul that longs for what this world will never provide. Your integrity has burdened you with the severe mercy of realizing that nothing in this world provides true joy.

“You’ve come to a fork in the road. One path beckons you with the promise that life can work well, and God exists to see to it that things go well enough for you to feel pretty good.

“The other path, the narrow one that not many choose, invites you to live in a disappointing world where good dreams will shatter and you will sometimes feel empty and alone, sometimes so empty and alone that it will seem like death. But this path promises the eventual discovery of a consuming desire within you for God and, far better, the thrilling discovery of His consuming desire to be intimate with you.

“After many dark nights, you will taste the joy of that intimacy. You will not be able to describe it, but you will feel alive, hopeful, solid, even in the middle of continued anguish over hard circumstances.

“Abandon yourself to God. He will seem at times cruelly unresponsive, callously indifferent. You will be tempted to manage life on your own, to do whatever you can to feel better.

“But if you’re quiet, you will hear both His voice and yours leading you to the narrow path.”

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