"Finding God in the Ruins" by Matt Bays

This is a book that takes a very, very honest look at pain and redemption and asks: What does redemption look like? Can everything be redeemed? There are so many horrors in the world, and whether they are atrocities on the other side of the world or the private horrors that lurk within our own homes, where is God?

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who wasn't ready for the honesty. A lot of people aren't. But if you know what it's like to look at life's ruins and wonder what it's all about, this could be a book that would help you. I found a lot of good things here, but I also disagreed with a good portion of the theology, so I can't really give it a full endorsement anyway. Use your own discernment about this and all reading choices.

It is so hard to wait for redemption for life's circumstances. "Sometimes it feels as if God has invited Himself into my pain, when I had hoped to be invited in His healing," Matt Bays says on page 133. I'm so glad we can know God is with us in the pain, but it certainly is a journey to keep believing in the hard moments. We'd like our lives to be beautiful and free of hard things, like glitter-coated rainbows that children might draw. I thought this was an interesting quote from Chapter 5: "I think God has grown weary of our drawings of rainbows... "Let's put these away for now," I can imagine God saying as He takes our brightly colored crayons and places them high on a shelf where we can no longer get at them. "This picture of your life isn't really accurate anyway, is it?" He asks, dumping our bowl of glitter into the trash. "I'd really love to see what you can do with these." He is holding out some of the drabbest crayons we've ever seen, a fist filled with the colors of alone."

Often we don't get to choose the circumstances which cause our pain. Abuse doesn't ask permission, tragedy comes uninvited, and the world is harsh. The ruins of our lives could very well be not of our own making, and balancing that with the belief that God allows these terrible things is more than some can take. This author almost decided to throw God out, but his quest for the redemption of his pain kept leading him back to God. "Each of us has a calling that comes from the core ache within us - a calling to write with our lives the beautiful stories of God's redemption," he shares in Chapter 17. Just like we don't get to choose our pain, we also don't get to choose our redemption. Our redemption may come not by a miraculous resolution of our problems - although God is capable and may provide that. It may come by allowing our pain and the fact that we survived it by His grace to be a beacon to others, a lighthouse of glory showing that even in the ruins His love is there.

My favorite chapter was the one called "Someone Else's Story," because it talks about how telling our stories honestly can bring healing. I really cheered through that chapter. Unfortunately I could not cheer throughout the whole book, but I will be taking the highlights with me on my own healing journey.




I received my copy of the book from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for this honest review. All opinions are my own. If you would like to read what other people are saying about "Finding God in the Ruins," click here.