This morning while working at the library I found Larry Crabb’s book, Shattered Dreams (WaterBrook Press, 2001) on the shelf which was a surprise. (Not many genuine Christian books find their way onto the shelves of an Australian public library). So I borrowed it and at lunchtime I read the introduction. This is part of what I read:

We have our own ideas about what a good God should do in the middle of our circumstances, ideas that stretch all the way from opening a space in a crowded parking lot near the mall’s entrance to funding our ministry dreams to straightening out our kids to giving us a negative biopsy report. It’s those ideas that get in the way of our realizing what goodness really is … The highest dream we could ever dream, the wish that if granted would make us happier than any other blessing, is to know God, to actually experience Him. The problem is that we don’t believe this idea is true. We assent to it in our heads. But we don’t feel it in our hearts.

Crabb begins his book by saying there are three ideas that fill his mind as he writes. These are:
1. God wants to bless us
2. The deepest pleasure we’re capable of experiencing is a direct encounter with God
3. God uses the pain of shattered dreams to help us discover our desire for God, to help us begin dreaming the highest dream.

So far Crabb has aroused my curiosity, let’s hope he delivers.