thoughts on "When God's Ways Make No Sense"

Funny thing here, is that I don’t remember requesting a review copy of this book. I remember seeing it on the list, and thinking that I wasn’t interested. After all anybody who has been around for a while already knows that God's ways rarely make sense, at least to we mere mortals. So I was surprised when it showed up on my doorstep.

                Just another example of “When God's Ways Make No Sense” This book by Dr Larry Crabb (Baker Books, 2018) though, does make sense. Crabb uses three Biblical figures: Jonah, Sual of Tarsus (better known today as the Apostle Paul) and Habakkuk to show how there are three basic default positions when God and we don’t agree on what makes sense in our crazy mixed up world.

                We can ‘resist and run’, like Jonah did. We can ‘distort and deny’ as Saul the Pharisee did, or we can tremble before God and learn to trust Him as did the prophet Habakkuk. Three distinct choices, three distinct outcomes.  Of course there’s more involved, but that is the starting place. Jonah thought he knew better than God: the people of Nineveh were horrible people, they deserved to be destroyed but God was offering them a chance for salvation.  Saul was going to make things better, but in the end it’s Habakkuk who teaches that there is nothing better than that which God has in mind for us.

                It’s just that God's will doesn’t always make sense. And our reactions are to get angry, to blame, to ignore, or with fear, awe and trembling, learn to trust.

                When God's ways make no sense, strange things happen. And we’re the better for it.

                I received a copy of this book as a member of the Baker Books bloggers program.  I was not required to write a positive review.

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