How's Your Own Personal Real Estate?

“Image and appearance tell you little. The inside is bigger than the outside when you have the eyes to see.” 
― Wm. Paul Young, Cross Roads

*****

When I drive down the street to Dollar Tree, always I expect to find one good book there. Or two, even, on days when I have great faith. 

Now, do I skip away with a just-what-I-wanted book every single visit? No, it's more like only 60 percent of the time (perhaps less). But still, the expecting is what matters, the having faith that God--somehow--placed a book upon those usually-messy shelves singularly for me. 

So this past Friday at Dollar Tree? I unburied this:

I'd not even heard of that book, but you should have seen my eyes widen when I realized the author of The Shack had written it. Wow. All mine! And all for only $1.

For the next two days at our glass-topped table (which I shove closer to the windows during winter so to feel the sun) I read this book and went all sorts of places in my mind.

I think I'd enjoy an in-person Mr. Young. He hears things like Jesus said we'd hear things if we'd listen:

"My sheep hear my voice..."

Mr. Young doesn't just write from his imagination (though it's a pleasant thing when other authors do that). No, he writes what he hears while plugged into Jesus. You can tell. All those words arranged in ways you'd never heard of, splattered over all those pages, spinning your brain around. My, my, my.

I turned the final page there in the sunshine and tried not to cry. I hadn't understood every sentence, but I do know what shook me most: it's the idea that all we do (good or bad), all we think/speak/give/keep/ponder/complain about/forgive/not forgive/hate/love, etc., creates real estate within our hearts. We are building an abiding place, a house, growing gardens, creating landscapes (and on and on) by the way we live our thousands of days. It's a place, a land we share with Jesus, acres where we converse, growing to know each other more deeply.

Or it can also be an echo-ey, thirst-like-crazy desert place, barren because of our ignorance and ignoring what matters most. It's our call. It's a result of our millions of choices, not what happened to us along the way, but rather, our reactions.

What a book, the kind that haunts you the week after you finish it. Many of you, I'm thinking, would be shaken by it, also.

*****

"What I am anxious to see in Christian believers is a beautiful paradox. I want to see in them the joy of finding God while at the same time they are blessedly pursuing Him. I want to see in them the great joy of having God yet always wanting Him."

    Author: A.W. Tozer



"Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty."   ... Psalm 91:1


'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me."   ... Revelation 3:20

*****

Interested in reading Cross Roads? Amazon's kindle store has it for just $2.99. A terrific deal for such a book.

Oh, wanted to add this-- not till the end of the first chapter did I feel I'd even like this book. Then I got pulled in and couldn't put it down. So to my kindred spirits--don't quit reading before the second chapter, ok? :)

And here is a link to The Shack.

*****

Free Kindle books:

Don't Wait for Me

Anne of the Island

Waterproof