In the rush of daily life, it can become too easy to treat our devotional practices as items on a checklist. In her book The Organic God, Christian author Margaret Feinberg calls on readers to find wonder, mystery, and joy in God in the world around us:When I encounter something new that represents everything that is good and true and beautiful, something awakens inside of me. Maybe it's a heart cry for the Creator or maybe it's the Creator's heart cry for me. I do not know, but such encounters remind me that there is so much more to do and experience and know -- not just about my world but about my God (9).
Feinberg advocates a lifestyle immersed in the Scriptures -- where the Bible is not a dry, dead text, but a living tool that God uses to transform us and speak to us. She writes that we need to constantly rediscover God and find renewal of relationship and communication with him in order to discover the pure and undiluted essence of God:
I want to discover God again, anew, in a fresh way. I want my love for him to come alive again so that my heart dances at the very thought of him. I want a real relationship with him -- a relationship that isn't altered by perfumes, additives, chemicals, or artificial flavors that promise to make it sweeter, sourer, or tastier than it really is. I want to know a God who is all his fullness would allow me to know him. I want a relationship that is real, authentic, and life-giving even when it hurts. I want to know God stripped of as many false perceptions as possible. Such a journey risks exposure, honesty, and even pain, but I'm hungry and desperate enough to go there. I want to know the Organic God (20).
The book takes readers through an exploration of the personal attributes of this undiluted God, which are (chapter by chapter): bighearted, breathtakingly beautiful, amazingly wise, surprisingly talkative, wildly infallible, outrageously stubborn, abundantly kind, and deeply mysterious.
The small group study questions at the end of the book are particularly well-written and selected, making it a good book for such a purpose.
Grade: B+
Disclosure notice: This book was given to me by the publisher, Zondervan, in exchange for a review at this blog.
3 comments:
It's not so much the book which makes me want to comment, but the fact that you were asked to do so by the publisher. Well done, my impressive blogger friend.
Whoa - free books? How'd you wrangle that?
You gotta be famous, like me.
I'd like to invite the Jaguar Motorcar Company to work out a similar deal with me.
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