William Young - The Shack

“Peter had the same problem: How to get out of the boat. It’s just like stepping off a one-foot-high stair. Nothing to it.”

“Will my feet get wet?” queried Mack.

“Of course, water is still wet.”

Again Mack looked down at the water and back at Jesus. “Then why is this so hard for me?”

“Tell me what you are afraid of, Mack.”

“Well, let me see. What am I afraid of?” began Mack. “Well, I am afraid of looking like an idiot. I am afraid that you are making fun of me and that I will sink like a rock. I imagine that-”

“Exactly,” Jesus interrupted. “You imagine. Such a powerful ability, the imagination! That power alone makes you so like us. But without wisdom, imagination is a cruel taskmaster. If I may prove my case, do you think humans were designed to live in the present or the past or the future?”

“Well,” said Mack, hesitating, “I think the most obvious answer is that we were designed to live in the present. Is that wrong?”

Jesus chuckled. “Relax, Mack; this is not a test, it’s a conversation. You are exactly correct, by the way. But now tell me, where do you spend most of your time in your mind, in your imagination, in the present, in the past, or in the future?”

Mack thought for a moment before answering. “I suppose I would have to say that I spend very little time in the present. For me, I spend a big piece in the past, but most of the rest of the time, I am trying to figure out the future.”

“Not unlike most people. When I dwell with you, I do so in the present-I live in the present. Not the past, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, but only for a visit, not an extended stay. And for sure, I do not dwell in the future you visualize or imagine. Mack, do you realize that your imagination of the future, which is almost always dictated by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures me there with you?”

Again Mack stopped and thought. It was true. He spent a lot of time fretting and worrying about the future, and in his imaginations it was usually pretty gloomy and depressing, if not outright horrible. And Jesus was also correct in saying that in Mack’s imaginations of the future, God was always absent.

“Why do I do that?” asked Mack.

“It is your desperate attempt to get some control over something you can’t. It is impossible for you to take power over the future because it isn’t even real, nor will it ever be real. You try and play God, imagining the evil that you fear becoming reality, and then you try and make plans and contingencies to avoid what you fear.”

“Yeah, that’s basically what Sarayu was saying,” responded Mack. “So why do I have so much fear in my life?”

“Because you don’t believe. You don’t know that we love you. The person who lives by their fears will not find freedom in my love. I am not talking about rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that those fears have a place in your life, you neither believe I am good nor know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it; you talk about it, but you don’t know it.”

Mack looked down once more at the water and breathed a huge sigh of the soul. “I have so far to go.”

“Only about a foot, it looks to me,” laughed Jesus, placing his hand on Mack’s shoulder. It was all he needed and Mack stepped off the dock. In order to try and see the water as solid, and not be deterred by its motion, he looked up at the far shore and held the lunch bags high just in case.

The landing was softer than he had thought it would be. His shoes were instantly wet, but the water did not come up even to his ankles. The lake was still moving all around him and he almost lost his balance because of it. It was strange. Looking down it seemed that his feet were on something solid but invisible. He turned to find Jesus standing next to him, holding his own shoes and socks in one hand and smiling.

“We always take off our shoes and socks before we do this,” he laughed.

Mack shook his head laughing as he sat back on the edge of the dock. “I think I will anyway.” He took them off, wrung out his socks, and then rolled up his pant legs, just to be sure.

They started off with footwear and lunch bags in hand and walked toward the opposite shore; about a half mile distant. The water felt cool and refreshing and sent chills up his spine. Walking on the water with Jesus seemed like the most natural way to cross a lake, and Mack was grinning ear to ear just thinking about what he was doing. He would occasionally look down to see if he could see any lake trout.

“This is utterly ridiculous and impossible, you know,” he finally exclaimed.

“Of course,” assented Jesus, grinning back at him.

They rapidly reached the far shore and Mack could hear the sound of rushing water growing louder, but he couldn’t see its source. Twenty yards from the shore he stopped. To their left and behind a high rock ridge he could see it, a beautiful waterfall spilling over a cliff‘s edge and dropping at least a hundred feet into a pool at the canyon floor. There it became a large creek that probably joined the lake beyond where Mack could see. Between them and the waterfall was an expanse of mountain meadow, filled with blooming wild-flowers haphazardly strewn and seeded by the wind. It was all stunning, and Mack stood for a moment breathing it in. An image of Missy flashed in his mind, but didn’t settle.

A pebbled beach awaited their approach, and behind it a backdrop of rich and dense forest rose up to the base of a mountain, crested by the whiteness of freshly fallen snow. Slightly to their left, at the end of a small clearing and just to the other side of a small babbling brook, a trail disappeared quickly into the wooded darkness. Mack stepped off of the water and onto the small rocks, gingerly making his way toward a log that had fallen. There, he sat down and again wrung out his socks, placing them and his shoes to dry in the near-noon sun.

Only then did he look up and across the lake. The beauty was staggering. He could make out the shack, where smoke leisurely rose from the red, brick chimney as it nestled against the greens of the orchard and forest. But dwarfing it all was a massive range of mountains that hovered above and behind, like sentinels standing guard. Mack simply sat, Jesus next to him, and inhaled the visual symphony.

“You do great work!” he said softly.

“Thank you, Mack, and you’ve seen so little. For now most of what exists in the universe will only be seen and enjoyed by me, like special canvasses in the back of an artist’s studio, but one day… And can you imagine this scene if the earth was not at war, striving so hard just to survive?”

“And you mean what, exactly?”

“Our earth is like a child who has grown up without parents, having no one to guide and direct her.” As Jesus spoke, his voice intensified in subdued anguish. “Some have attempted to help her but most have simply tried to use her. Humans, who have been given the task to lovingly steer the world, instead plunder her with no consideration, other than their immediate needs. And they give little thought for their own children who will inherit their lack of love. So they use her and abuse her with little consideration and then when she shudders or blows her breath, they are offended and raise their fist at God.”

“You’re an ecologist?” Mack said, half as an accusation.

“This blue-green ball in black space, filled with beauty even now, battered and abused and lovely.”

“I know that song. You must care deeply about the Creation,” smiled Mack.

“Well, this blue-green ball in black space belongs to me,” Jesus stated emphatically.