I Am Lost: day 5 of the Count Your Blessings Challenge

Since tomorrow is a very busy day, I'm posting this a day early on the day before. Come back on the 12th for day 6!

We moved when I was in the middle of the third grade, from a town of under 400 people in Newcastle, Nebraska, to Pasadena, California. It was a change.

For about three months we lived in a rental house, and I walked to school down a eucalyptus-lined street in the heat of a southern California autumn.

Then, we relocated to the central valley, to another small town where I walked to school again. This time it was just around a corner or two. Problem was, I couldn't remember which way to turn after I got out of school.

I couldn't ask anyone, because no one knew where I lived! I was new in town.

So...I did the only thing I knew to do. I prayed. I must have turned the right direction after that, because I got home all right.

In retrospect, it was a small crisis, but for a third grader, it was huge.

I have always looked back on this incident as a faith building moment. An eight year old's blessing.

Finding Our Way Illuminates

A Review of:

Finding Our Way Again

by Brian McLaren

Like the aging actor, fumbling lines he has long ago committed to memory, America’s sense of faith seems to have forgotten the lines. We’re in danger of being lost in a watered down soup that could only be described as postchristendom.

Brian McLaren sounds a warning that is at once heartening comfort food for the wandering spiritual traveler, and a gentle wakeup call for sleeping souls.

Finding our way is about integrating ancient liturgical practices of the Catholic and Anglican tradition with the individualized spontaneity of Protestantism. The broken marriage between Catholics and the Reformers has divided the church for centuries and produced a spiritual disorientation that McLaren believes can be made whole by a return to practices that have only been preserved in certain denominations. Far from a book about reviving dead ritual, the book sparkles with meaningful suggestions about transforming each day into a new worshipful experience with God. 

One fly in the ointment for the average Christian is McLaren’s inclusion of Islam as one of the three Abrahamic religions. While he doesn’t develop this idea, it stands out as an odd grouping to a westerner. 

Questions at the end of each chapter provide opportunity to interact with the book. 

I received  a copy of the book from Thomas Nelson Publishers through the booksneeze program in return for my honest opinion.