Isaac, my three year old, listens with such intensity that he has to stop painting. Jude sneaks a foot over to Isaac's chair (which bothers Isaac worse than anything), and Isaac stares into his brother and grits out "God is love, Jude. The song says God is Love!"
He believes it. As much as he knows how, he believes that God will take away all pain one day. He believes it: Jesus is not pretend.
There is no bigger or better way to believe than how a child can, and I think Young does a fine job with Missy's little character, especially in how she studies the story of the beautiful Indian maid and in how she later asks questions. She points out that God seems mean to make the princess jump off the cliff and to make Jesus die on the cross, and Mack soothes her in his big daddy arms, saying that God would never ask her to jump off a cliff.
This is where the rub comes in. Little Missy does get to be Jesus for her daddy who had been stuck for so long with a white-haired grandpaw-God, an alcoholic bruiser of a dad, and a get-out-of-jail-for-free card from seminary. Missy gets to be the princess jumping from the cliff to save her daddy's relationship with Papa. And she's right. It doesn't seem fair, does it?
I guess that's why he had to use something so brutal for his readers to understand Mack's Great Sadness, and now, I'm expecting for Papa to tell us about it. If Young doesn't nail The Question of Evil square in the head, then I'll be shnookered.
Really? Isn't it the point, though, that we be made like our Saviour God? Outside of the horrendous avenue from which it happens, it is beautiful that Missy gets to be her Daddy's princess, taking him to the lowest of lows so that Papa could heal him from wounds that were generations old.
3 comments:
amber - i like when you write about your kids. and i like the times i've seen you write about seth. it's obvious where your heart is. and it's so big and beautiful to see. keep the good stuff coming.
this is the one thing i love most about God: that God takes the horrendous and makes the beautiful. that's the craziest thing i've ever heard. it's not like recycling old broken car parts to make art - it's the total reformation of what one power intended for bad and God breathes into it a goodness that can never be robbed. amazing. so amazing.
This is why I love reading books with others and discussing them: I hadn't even thought of Missy that way. Maybe it's because I read the first four chapters almost totally on the bus or in the car in one day, so I didn't get to spend the time thinking about it that I wish to, but now that you say it, it is blatantly obvious.
I thought the first four chapters did a good job of setting up the scene. I wish that Young would have left us in a little more suspense regarding what happened to Missy instead of stating right off that she was kidnapped. But I have to tell myself that this is not one of the true crime books that my fiance has gotten me to read, it is spiritual fiction. I'm holding off judgment until I finish.
not on this little ditty, but earlier people were talking about how hard it was to read about the girl and the source of Mack's Great Sadness.
i agree with amber that Young needed to have something this emotionally charged or else i might be left thinking, gee Mack, bad things happen to everybody man so get over it.
if this happened to someone i knew, and they were suffering years later, it would be hard for me to say that.
Prior to reading this book, my greatest fear was for my wife to die while we were still young/and or while giving birth to a child.
After reading this, i think my new biggest fear is to have a sweet and innocent child of mine taken from me without a trace and have no idea what ever happened to her.
AND, to think that i was somehow responsible by being careless.
Wow. i don't even have a child of my own yet, and i felt like i related and wanted to go wake up my non-existent child and hug him/her just to be close to them.
this is emotion i have not had come to the surface when reading a fiction book in a long time. i don't think it was trite, i think it hit me where there is a soft spot.
missy does embody innocence. And because of that you can see Mack's guilt--(the polar opposite) for how severe and oppressive that it is.
As we find, the ultimate question of "how can you let these bad things happen to such good people" sort of manifest itself within the context of missy and that Mack somehow still believes Papa is not just, papa is not really a papa because no one who claims to love Missy would be capable of allowing this to happen to her.
Did Mack ever consider how hard it was For God to not only give up His child, but actually send Him toward an end which was also gruesome and humiliating?
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