Today I finished reading Illusion by one of my favorite authors, Frank Peretti…
I had taken the book to church with me.
Crazy, I know, but I played bells during the early service at one of my church’s campuses and then drove to another campus to attend another service with my family.
I knew I’d have time to kill…
Hence, the book.
I put it away when the service began.
Boy, did I sit up straight when my pastor got to the part of his message in which he said the word “illusion” several times.
Hello?
Yes, Lord, I’m seeing a connection here.
It was only after returning home after church and spending the better part of the afternoon that I finished reading the book, along with the author’s notes at the end.
The book is about a husband and wife who spend the forty years they are married performing as magicians. Then, the wife, Mandy, gets killed in a car accident. Shortly afterward, Mandy finds herself back in her 19-year old body in the town she grew up in, but she thinks it’s 1970, but the only memories she retains are the ones up to that day she’s thrown back to. She and Dane, her “husband,” reconnect through a series of events, but there’s mystery involving their meeting and whatnot. The rest of the book entails their efforts to understand why they are connected to each other and how to solve the issue.
It was a wonderful book, full of twists and turns.
I’m still processing the many different underlying themes of the book.
Hence my pastor’s sermon and his use of the word “illusion.”
Gosh…there’s just so much in my head and heart…so many things that my pastor didn’t say…stuff that he did say.
I was very moved and connected with his words as he shared his grief over the sudden loss of his father four years ago.
I lost my dad eleven years ago this month.
Tom, my pastor, spoke about how, after his father died, he developed a fear of dying and leaving his family.
I can relate.
I think that many people are confounded by the mystery involving death and what’s left afterward. Not that my pastor is, mind you, but still, there are questions that even the most learned theologian must grapple with.
I think about people I’ve come into contact with in the past…people I worked with last year…the students I taught…the people I encounter every day who don’t know or choose purposely not to believe in Christ’s resurrection and how that relates to our own deaths.
Just as Mandy, in Peretti’s book, cheated death despite the chains that placed her in bondage during her magic tricks, Jesus Christ fought and WON the battle against eternal death, throwing off the shackles, emerging as the risen Savior.
Jesus’s death and resurrection, however, was no illusion.
It was the real stuff…not a trick that some other person could or will ever repeat again.
Filed under: Christian | Tagged: Christianity, Frank Peretti, Illusion | 3 Comments »
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