God and slaughterhouse-five

if you're soooo interested in my life and read this blog every day, you can keep yet another tab on me by checking out my book list. i know, i know, i'm so cool and interesting.

i'll admit, i do have a somewhat random assortment of books on the list. christian fiction [don't judge me], christian non-fiction, non-fiction, marriage books, young adult fiction, classic american lit and even an unpublished novel just so you know i've got sweet connections [thanks erik].

anyway, i just finished slaughterhouse-five last weekend.

it's a novel that was on every recommended reading book list i received in my english and history classes in high school. my sophomore year i heard some stupid boys joking about a sex scene in the book and i decided i probably should never read it. then i married a guy who owned the book and after two years of it being on our bookshelf, i decided to give a try.

i was instantly "in." it normally takes me an average 30-50 pages to get into a story, but i loved the writing style immediately. i asked bryan, is the whole book like this? because i love it.  i was not expecting this book to have such an effect on me.

and somehow, i'm pretty sure vonnegut did not intend for me to be effected in the way i was.

"I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber." [pg 85-86]

in the midst of a heavily satirical book about the senselessness of war and violence and hatred, all i could think about was God.

i thought about how God is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. God has been and always will be. time, as we know it, has no effect on Him or His will. God does not change.

we see death, we see destruction, we see foolishness, we see beauty, we see love. and we see those things in these little moments of time, because that's all we can see. we're bugs in amber, limited by the small amounts of time before and after us. in the meantime, God is endless. He sees all of these same things, but together, at the same time. He is not bound by time. He sees us as what we were, who we are, and who we will be at the same time. God sees "all time as you might see a stretch of the rocky mountains."

kurt vonnegut, i believe unintentionally so, helped me immensely to truly understand how God sees us and the world.

slaughterhouse-five, of all books, made me in awe of God and allowed me to understand Him a little more clearly.