Silence

I've just finished reading this book. Will finished it last week, and I think Linnea read it before him. It was sitting on the endtable, and since I hadn't read a book for awhile, buried as I was in crochet yarn, I decided I'd check it out.

I'm still digesting it. It wasn't a comfortable book to read. I don't really want to write a review, nor can I do it justice. Here's a review I read online that will give you an idea of what the story is about without spoiling the ending.

Of course any time you read a book, you view that story through your lenses. I'm reading it as an evangelical Protestant. It's about a Catholic priest set back in the 17th century during persecution of Christians in Japan. All the while I read it, I kept thinking about how complicated Roman Catholic Christianity is with all its rituals and works. It is so binding. The poor people wanted to confess their sins and thought they couldn't without a priest. How sad to carry that burden! They had set up their own hierarchy to try to remedy this problem. How freeing is the priesthood of the believer! Christ knows my pain, my sin, and is always there. "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" No where.

Then there's always the silence. The silence of God that the priest felt in the face of all the loneliness and persecution.

It was a good book. Any of you around here read it? I'd really like to get in to some kind of book group, so that I could read and discuss the book with others!

Our Sunday School class has been like that reading The Reason for God. We end up sitting in class long after the scheduled time is over. It ends next Sunday. sad. That's another great book if you haven't read it. I've been through it twice now.

He is there, and He is not silent! Hallelujah!