I just finished the book God is Closer Than You Think by John Ortberg. Ortberg is a gifted communicator and this book comes across as what it is meant to be a written sermon. I am sure that is how it started or ended up: as a sermon series at Meno Park. It was a fast read and here are a few quotes from it that I found interesting:

“Thomas Merton once said that if you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.” As a guy who is half introverted and half extroverted and a contemplative it was a great reminder that my struggle at times to find God is a good struggle and an essential part of my spirituality.

I was also struck by the quote from Karl Barth: “God would rather be the suffering God of a suffering people than the blest God of an unblest people.” Ortberg adds to this by talking about “the cross as the ultimate paradox: God experiencing the absence of God so that he can draw close to us in our loss and grief.” The whole paradox idea in Christianity is something I want to explore further with a movie review I want to write soon on “Primer.”