Here are some responses to a recent interview about Reaching for Wonder. May they encourage you when life is difficult and you need more than "just have faith."
Interview:
1. Why Reaching for Wonder? Why is this theme important to you?
When I first started to really grapple with this idea of Reaching for Wonder when life is at its worst, my family was in the midst of some of the most difficult and painful times we’ve ever had to face. We were going through betrayal, from both inside and outside of the family. We were being threatened by a stalker, so we were dealing with the difficult and scary process of getting and enforcing a restraining order. Our business also took a turn for the worse. The stress was causing health problems on top of marital conflicts, and everything else. Life hurt.
I had discovered when we had faced infertility and miscarriage in the past, that the idea of “just have faith” and “God won’t give you more than you can bear” is, well, a bunch of hooey.
Life is HARD. Heartbreaking, soul-choking things happen to us. This life is not a walk in the park with daisies. It’s a journey that has peaks and beautiful vistas, but it also has dark valleys where we can barely remember what the sun looks like. Sometimes it seems as if those valleys will never end. This life is a battle for our souls.
In my latest valleys, I started looking more carefully and deeply at the Jesus we see in the New Testament. I looked at how he interacts with those who are facing things that were more than they could bear. I found the real Jesus is not a “just have faith and it will be okay” type of God. He is a breath-taking, vivid God who meets us in the times of trouble and encounters us in ways I didn’t expect. In ways that shake me from my “just have faith” mentality. He’s not after a shallow Band-Aid faith. He’s after a life-changing, shock-my-soul relationship with the living God. And that matters. It matters to me.
To me, that changes everything.
2. What is something that surprised you the most while researching Reaching for Wonder?
The miracle stories in the New Testament are not miracle stories at all. In fact, the miracles, the healings, even the resurrections, are written almost as an afterthought to the heart of the story. It’s the encounter with Christ, the internal transformation that comes from that encounter, that is front and center in these stories. It is this unexpected and out-of-the-box Messiah who takes center-stage. The changes of circumstance, the healings, are told in a “oh, by the way, the person was healed” sort of manner. And that changes everything. When I come to God when life hurts, when I’m praying and hoping that He will just “fix it,” God’s interest isn’t focused on my circumstances (like mine is), rather, it’s on me. His goal is that I encounter him face-to-face and see him for who he really is.
3. What do you most want readers to take away from Reaching for Wonder?
I want readers to have encountered Christ in the their own difficulties. I want them to have discovered him a new, deeper, richer, more vibrant and more wonder-filled way … even if their circumstances haven’t changed. I want them to take away a new and vivid Hope.
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