Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams Into New Beginnings
Sheridan Voysey
Thomas Nelson Publisher
Resurrection Year, an autobiography about recovering from broken dreams, is a wonderful book truthful enough to acknowledge a silent God and emotional enough to pull you through the times of silence.
Sheridan Voysey and his wife reluctantly release their dogged hold on their dream of having a child after ten years of dashed hopes and many failed rounds of IVF. Heartbroken and disillusioned, they give up their jobs, pack their bags and head to Europe to find healing... hope... something.
Through Rome, Paris, Switzerland and England, the Voyseys wrestle with doubts about God's goodness.
The opposite of faith isn't doubt but indifference, because those who doubt are still engaged with the question while the indifferent don't care.
Was it the silence of God he (Jesus) experienced in Gethsemane -- when he pleaded for his life to be spared? He prayed three times with such anguish he sweated blood; even an angel couldn't console his distress. Yet there was no voice from Heaven like there was at his baptism, no thundery words as there were at his transfiguration. Only silence.
The Voyseys came to see their journey through infertility to be a wilderness journey, drawing the imagery from the infamous Biblical story of the Jews lost in the wilderness enroute to the promised land......
"The wilderness is a place of trial, a place of doubt, a place of restless discontent. It's a place of blazing sun and barren ground, of wild animals and dark powers, where you feel vulnerable and exposed and fear your needs won't be met. It's a place of hardship and difficulty, where you question God's goodness in your adversity.....
But while the wilderness is a place of struggle and pain, it more than this, I find. While a place of trial, it is also a place of provision; while a place of doubt, it is also a place of discovery; while a place of restlessness, it is also a place of change. Because the wilderness, for the Jews, was a place of manna and quail coming down from Heaven and clothes that never wore out. It was the place where they discovered their identity as Israel, the children of God, and the place where God changed their grumbling, wayward hearts.....
It is a place of transition.
Because the wilderness is the ground between what was and what will be -- the place between slavery and freedom, between immaturity and wisdom, between God's promise and its fulfillment, between who we were and who we are to be. In the wilderness we become people we could never have become before moving into the next phase of our lives.
After the wilderness comes a new beginning."
The silence and the broken dreams led Sheridan Voysey to conclude "God may have been silent, but He was never absent."
Resurrection Year came into my life precisely when I needed a resurrection year myself. This book really shed some light on God's silence, my doubts and a couple of big ol' broken dreams. The book's a keeper.
Disclosure: As a blogger book reviewer for Thomas Nelson, I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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