{"product_id":"finding-god-in-unexpected-places-isbn-9781400074709","title":"Finding God in Unexpected Places","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe traces of God can be found in the most unexpected places--an Atlanta slum, a pod of whales off the coast of Alaska, the prisons of Peru and  Chile, the plays of Shakespeare, a health club in Chicago--yet many Christians  have not only missed seeing God, they’ve overlooked opportunities to make him visible  to those most in need of hope.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In this enlightening book author Philip Yancey serves  as an insightful tour guide for those willing to look beyond the obvious, pointing  out glimpses of the eternal where few might think to look. Whether finding God among  the newspaper headlines, within the church, or on the job, Yancey delves deeply into  the commonplace and surfaces with rich spiritual insight. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eFinding God in Unexpected  Places\u003c\/i\u003e takes readers from Ground Zero to the Horn of Africa, and each stop along  the way reveals footprints of God, touches of his truth and grace that prompt readers  to search deeper within their own lives for glimpses of transcendence.Philip Yancey is a distinguished writer with 20 books to his credit and a total of more than seven million copies in print. His books, including \u003ci\u003eThe Jesus I Never Knew, What’s So Amazing About Grace?\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWhere Is God When It Hurts?\u003c\/i\u003e have won a total of twelve Gold Medallion Awards. He has been published in \u003ci\u003eReader’s Digest, Christianity Today\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Saturday Evening Post\u003c\/i\u003e.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e Rumors of Another World\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e According to Greek mythology, people once knew   in advance their exact day of death. Everyone on earth lived with a deep sense of   melancholy, for mortality hung like a sword suspended above them. All that changed   when Prometheus introduced the gift of fire. Now humans could reach beyond themselves   to control their destinies; they could strive to be like the gods. Caught up in excitement   over these new possibilities, people soon lost the knowledge of their death day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Have we moderns lost even more? Have we lost, in fact, the sense that we will die   at all?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Although some authors argue as much (such as social theorist Ernest Becker   in \u003ci\u003eThe Denial of Death\u003c\/i\u003e), I have found that behind the noise of daily life, rumors   of another world can still be heard. The whispers of death persist, and I have heard   them, I believe, in three unlikely places: a health club, a political action group,   and a hospital therapy group. I have even detected the overtones—but only overtones—of   theology in these unexpected places.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e I joined the Chicago Health Club after a foot   injury forced me to find alternatives to running. It took a while to adjust to the   artificiality of the place. Patrons lined up to use high-tech rowing machines, complete   with video screens and animation pace boats, though Lake Michigan, a real lake requiring   real oars, lay empty just four blocks away. In another room, people working out at   Stairmaster machines duplicated the act of climbing stairs--this in a dense patch   of high-rise buildings. And I marveled at the technology that adds computer-programmed   excitement to the everyday feat of bicycling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I marveled, too, at the human bodies   using all these machines: the gorgeous women wearing black and hot pink leotards,   and the huge hunks of masculinity who clustered around the weight machines. Mirrored   glass, appropriately, sheathed the walls, and a quick glance revealed dozens of eyes   checking out the results of all the sweating and grunting, on themselves and on their   neighbors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The health club is a modern temple, complete with initiation rites and   elaborate rituals, its objects of worship on constant and glorious display. I detected   a trace of theology there, for such devotion to the human form gives evidence of   the genius of a Creator who designed with aesthetic flair. The human person is worth   preserving. And yet, in the end, the health club stands as a pagan temple. Its members   strive to preserve only one part of the person: the body, the least enduring part   of all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ernest Becker wrote his book and died before the exercise craze gripped   America, but I imagine he would see in health clubs a blatant symptom of death-denial.   Health clubs, along with cosmetic surgery, baldness retardants, skin creams, and   an endless proliferation of magazines on sports, swimsuits, and dieting help direct   our attention away from death toward life. Life in this body. And if we all strive   together to preserve our bodies, then perhaps science will one day achieve the unthinkable:   perhaps it will conquer mortality and permit us to live forever, like Gulliver’s   toothless, hairless, memoryless race of Struldbruggs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Once, as I was pedaling nowhere   on a computerized bicycle, I thought of Kierkegaard’s comment that the knowledge   of one’s own death is the essential fact that distinguishes us from animals. I looked   around the exercise room wondering just how distinguished from the animals we modern   humans are. The frenzied activity I was participating in at that moment—was it merely   one more way of denying or postponing death? As a nation, do we grow sleek and healthy   so that we do not have to think about the day our muscular bodies will be, not pumping   iron, but lying stiff in a casket?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Martin Luther told his followers, “Even in the   best of health we should have death always before our eyes [so that] we will not   expect to remain on this earth forever, but will have one foot in the air, so to   speak.” His words seem quaint indeed today when most of us, pagan and Christian alike,   spend out days thinking about everything but death. Even the church focuses mainly   on the good that faith can offer \u003ci\u003enow\u003c\/i\u003e: physical health, inner peace, financial security,   a stable marriage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Physical training is of some value, the apostle Paul advised   his protégé Timothy, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for   both the present life and the life to come. As I pedaled, straining against computer-generated   hills, I had to ask myself: What is my spiritual counterpart to the Chicago Health   Club? And then, more troubling: How much time and energy do I devote to each?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e For   two years I attended monthly meetings of a local chapter of Amnesty International.   There I met good people, serious people: students and executives and professionals   who gather together because they find it intolerable blithely to go on with life   while other people are being tortured and killed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Amnesty International’s local   chapters use an absurdly simple technique to combat human rights abuses: they write   letters. Our group adopted three prisoners of conscience, all of whom were serving   long-term sentences for “unpatriotic activity.” Each week we would discuss their   fates and report on the letters we had written to esteemed officials in their respective   countries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As we sat in a comfortable townhouse eating brownies and fresh vegetables   and sipping coffee, we tried to envision how Jorge and Ahmad and Joseph were spending   their days and evenings. Letters from their families gave us agonizing insight into   their hardships. Despite our efforts to resist it, most of the time a vague feeling   of powerlessness pervaded the room. We had received no word from Jorge in two years,   and officials in his South American country no longer answered our letters. Most   likely he had joined “the disappeared.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The tone of earnest concern in the group   reminded me of many prayer meetings I had attended. Those, too, focused group energy   on specific human needs. Yet at Amnesty International no one dared pray, a fact that   perhaps added to the sense of helplessness. Although the organization was founded   on Christian principles, any trace of sectarianism had long since disappeared.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Here   is a strange thing, I thought one evening. A worthy organization exists for the sole   purpose of keeping people alive. Thousands of bright, dedicated people congregate   in small groups centered on that singular goal. But one question is never addressed:   \u003ci\u003eWhy\u003c\/i\u003e should we keep people alive?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I have asked that question of Amnesty International   staff members, provoking a response of quiet horror. The very phrasing of the question   seemed heretical to them. Why keep people alive? The answer is self-evident, is it   not? Life is good; death is bad (I presume they meant animal life is good, since   we were munching vegetable life as we spoke).\u003cbr\u003e These staff members missed the irony   that Amnesty International came into existence because not all people in history   see their equation as self-evident. To Hitler, to Stalin, to Saddam Hussein, death   can be a good if it helps accomplish other goals. No ultimate value attaches to any   one human life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Amnesty International recognizes the inherent worth of every human   being. Unlike, say, the Chicago Health Club, AI does not elevate beautiful specimens   of perfect health: the objects of our attention were mostly bruised and beaten, with   missing teeth and unkempt hair and signs of malnutrition. But what makes such people   worthy of our care? To put it bluntly, is it possible to honor the image of God in   a human being if there is no God?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To raise such questions at an Amnesty International   meeting is to invite a time of stern and awkward silence. Explanations may follow.   \u003ci\u003eThis is not a religious organization. . . . We cannot deal with such sectarian views.   . . . People have differing opinions. . . . The important issue is the fate of our   prisoners. . . . \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In our strange society, it seems the questions most worth asking   are the questions most ignored. The French mathematician Blaise Pascal lived during   the seventeenth-century Enlightenment era, when Western thinkers first began scorning   belief in a soul and the afterlife, matters of doctrine that seemed to them primitive   and unsophisticated. Pascal said of such people, “Do they profess to have delighted   us by telling us that they hold our soul to be only a little wind and smoke, especially   by telling us this in a haughty and self-satisfied tone of voice? Is this a thing   to say gaily? Is it not, on the contrary, a thing to say sadly, as the saddest thing   in the world?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I still belong to Amnesty International and contribute money to it.   I believe in their cause, but I believe in it for different reasons. Why do strangers   such as Ahmad and Joseph and Jorge deserve my time and energy? I can think of only   one reason: that they bear the sign of ultimate worth, the image of God.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Amnesty   International teaches a more advanced theology than the Chicago Health Club, to be   sure. It points past the surface of skin and shape to the inner person. But the organization   stops short—for what makes the inner person worth preserving, unless it be a soul?   And for that very reason, shouldn’t Christians lead the way in such issues as human   rights? According to the Bible, all humans, including Jorge and Ahmad and Joseph,   are immortal beings who still bear some mark of the Creator.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Members of the Chicago   Health Club do their best to defy or at least forestall death. Amnesty International   works diligently to prevent it. But another group I attended faces death head-on,   once a month.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I was first invited to Make Today Count, a support group for people   with life-threatening illnesses, by my neighbor Jim, who had just been diagnosed   with terminal cancer. There we met other people, mostly in their thirties, who were   battling such diseases as multiple sclerosis, hepatitis, muscular dystrophy, and   cancer. For each member of the group, all of life had boiled down to two issues:   surviving and, failing that, preparing for death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e We sat in a hospital waiting area   on molded plastic chairs of a garish orange hue (doubtless chosen to make the institution   appear more cheerful). We tried to ignore the loudspeaker periodically crackling   out an announcement or paging a doctor. The meeting began with each member “checking   in.” Jim whispered to me this was the most depressing part of the meeting, because   very often someone had died in the month since the last meeting. The social worker   provided details of the missing member’s last days and the funeral.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The members   of Make Today Count confronted death because they had no choice. I had expected a   mood of great somberness, but found just the opposite. Tears flowed freely, of course,   but these people spoke easily and comfortably about disease and death. Clearly, the   group was the one place they could talk openly about such issues.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Nancy showed off   a new wig, purchased to cover the baldness caused by chemotherapy treatments. She   joked that she had always wanted straight hair, and now her brain tumor had finally   given her an excuse. Steve, a young man with Hodgkin’s disease, admitted he was terrified   of what lay ahead. His fiancée refused to discuss the future with him at all. How   could he break through to her?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Martha talked about death. The disease ALS (“Lou   Gehrig’s disease”) had already rendered her legs and arms useless. Now she breathed   with great difficulty, and whenever she fell asleep at night there was a danger of   death from oxygen deprivation. Martha was twenty-five years old. “What is it you   fear about death?” someone asked. Martha thought a minute and then said this, “I   regret all that I’m going to miss--next year’s big movies, for example, and the election   results. And I fear that I will one day be forgotten. That I’ll just disappear, and   no one will even miss me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e More than any other people I have met, members of the   Make Today Count group concentrated on ultimate issues. They, unlike the Chicago   Health Clubbers, could not deny death; their bodies bore memento mori, reminders   of inevitable, premature death. Every day they were, in Saint Augustine’s phrase,   “deafened by the clanking chains of mortality.” I wanted to use them as examples   for my hedonistic friends, to walk down the street and interrupt parties to announce,   “We’re all going to die. I have proof. Just around the corner is a place where you   can see it for yourself. Have you thought about death?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Yet would such awareness   change anyone for more than a few minutes? As one of novelist Saul Bellow’s characters   put it, the living speed like birds over the surface of the water, and one will dive   or plunge but not come up again and never be seen again. But life goes on. Five thousand   people die in America each day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One night Donna, a member of the Make Today Count   group, told about watching a television program on the public service station. In   the program, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross discussed a boy in Switzerland who was dying of   an inoperable brain tumor. Kübler-Ross asked him to draw a picture of how he felt.   He drew a large, ugly military tank, and behind the tank he drew a small house with   trees, grass, sunshine, and an open window. In front of the tank, just at the end   of the gun barrel, he drew a tiny figure with a red stop sign in his hand. Himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Donna said that picture captured her feelings precisely. Kübler-Ross had gone on   to describe the five stages of grief, culminating in the stage of acceptance. And   Donna knew she was supposed to work toward acceptance. But she could never get past   the stage of fear. Like the little boy in front of the tank, she saw death as an   enemy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Someone brought up religious faith and belief in an afterlife, but the comment   evoked the same response in Make Today Count as it had in Amnesty International:   a long silence, a cleared throat, a few rolled eyes. The rest of the evening, the   group focused on how Donna could overcome her fears and grow toward the acceptance   stage of grief.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I left that meeting with a heavy heart. Our materialistic, undogmatic   culture was asking its members to defy their deepest feelings. Donna and the small   Swiss boy with the brain tumor had, by sheer primal instinct, struck upon a cornerstone   of Christian theology. Death is an enemy, a grievous enemy, the last enemy to be   destroyed. How could members of a group that each month saw families fall apart and   bodies deteriorate before their eyes still wish for a spirit of bland acceptance?   I could think of only one appropriate response to Donna’s impending death: \u003ci\u003eCurse   you, death!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was another aspect of Christian theology, too, the one, most sadly,   that Make Today Count would not discuss. The Swiss boy had included his vision of   Heaven in the background, represented by the grass and trees and the cottage with   an open window. Any feeling like “acceptance” would be appropriate only if he was   truly going somewhere, somewhere like home. That is why I consider the doctrine of   Heaven one of the most neglected doctrines of our time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “I think it is very hard   for secular men to die,” said Ernest Becker, as he turned to God in the last months   of his life.Readers Group Guide Inside","brand":"WaterBrook","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304606748901,"sku":"NP9781400074709","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400074709.jpg?v=1767726892","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/finding-god-in-unexpected-places-isbn-9781400074709","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}