Think about your favorite book.  What makes that book a favorite for you?

We have our  favorite books for a reason.  Somehow, the book speaks to us.  We identify. We feel something we don’t usually feel.  Or see something.

One of my favorite books growing up was “Little Women”.  In that book, I saw myself in the part of Jo March.  She was me.  I was her.  Even down to the red hair.  I must have read that book at least 5 times, all 400 plus pages. Jo March’s life personified a road map, a way of approaching life,  that I felt was, or would be, true of my own life.

Another reason we are drawn to certain books is because in it we find a language that is ours, but that we haven’t been able to fully articulate on our own.  In our gut, we feel things, believe things, but we don’t always know how to talk about it. We haven’t yet found the language for what we sense at a very deep, primal, and yet profound level.

I just finished reading, for the second time, Rob Bell’s latest book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God.  This is one of those books. A book that gives me language for things I’ve known and felt deep within but haven’t always known how to talk about.

There are three main ideas to the book:  With. For. Ahead.

WITH.   You’ve heard people (like me) dramatically exclaim,  “That was a God-moment!” or, “God  really showed up!” and in doing so we suggest that perhaps God is not always with us, or that God randomly shows up at will.  In this book, Rob Bell explores the ways that God is always with us.

“I believe God is with us, around us, beside us, present with us in every moment.  The question, then, the art, the task, the search, the challenge, the invitation is for you and me to become more and more the kind of people who are aware of the divine presence, attuned…. present to the depths of each and every moment, seeing God in more and more and more people, places and events, each and every day.”

Imagine how that awareness could positively transform our every moment?

FOR.  In a world where a staggering number of people believe that God is against them, or that they somehow have to become more moral, more disciplined, more spiritual, more holy,  to be in, accepted or embraced or affirmed or loved by God, Bell beautifully illustrates from the Bible the fundamental Christian message that God is for everyone.

“Gospel is the shocking, provocative, revolutionary, subversive, counterintuitive good news that in your moments of greatest despair, failure, sin, weakness, losing, failing, frustration, inability, helplessness, wanderings, and falling short, God meets you there– right there– right exactly there- in that place, and announces, I am on your side.”

I love this so much because I meet people all of the time who think God is angry at them, or against them in some way, or ready to punish them at any moment.  If something bad happens, it’s because God thought they needed it or deserved it.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

AHEAD.  Rob Bell asks,

“Is God progressive, with a better, more inspiring vision for our future than we could ever imagine, or is God behind, back there, in the past, endlessly trying to get us to return to how it used to be?… Is the best future a return to an imagined pristine era when things were ideal, or is our best future actually in the future?”

Bell goes on to show how God is about meeting people where they are at, and then drawing, inviting, pulling, and calling them forward into more of all that God is about. Greater peace, love, justice, respect, digniity, equality. Bell refers to this as the “Divine Pull”.  I love that.

Rob Bell suggests that it’s possible for churches and religious communities to claim to speak for God while actually at the same time being behind the movement of God in the world.  He gives several very excellent Biblical examples of this reality and I don’t have to go far to see that in our current world.

I know that for some Rob Bell is a controversial figure.  I hope, though, that you haven’t written him off simply from what you have heard.  I find that his material is thought provoking, stimulating, and challenging.  It causes me to think. And consider.

The takeaways for me from this book are many. But most importantly, I love the simplicity of the language it’s given me that captures some of my own beliefs and convictions:  With. For. Ahead.

What is your favorite book, and why?  Leave a comment!