Sermon Central
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In His Book, Metamorpha, Kyle Strobel Tells About ...
Contributed by Isaac Butterworth on Jun 20, 2008 (message contributor)
In his book, Metamorpha, Kyle Strobel tells about a friend of his whose name is Cassie. Cassie was a first-year seminary student whose view of God had never been challenged. Suddenly, she found herself in a setting in which it seemed to her that her image of God was being dismantled. It was as though the God she knew and loved was being, in her words, “smashed to pieces.”
But one of her professors helped her to see what was going on. She tells about a critical moment in her personal understanding of God. “I will never forget the moment,” she says, “[when] Professor Ray Anderson...told [our] systematic theology class about a woman who, in her later years of life, decided to begin playing the piano. She searched for the best piano teacher she could possibly find and asked him how she could become a master pianist such as [he was]. He looked hesitantly at her, asking her if she [were] sure she wanted to do this. He explained to her that at her age, [her] bones had naturally calcified and were configured in a certain way. To play the piano, she would need to engage in finger exercises that would break this calcium down, thereby giving her supple, flexible fingers that would allow her fingers to extend to the various keys. He warned her that the finger exercises and the calcium breakdown would be excruciatingly painful, as if her fingers were being smashed” (Strobel, Metamorpha, pp. 20f.).
According to Strobel, “Cassie soon realized that her spiritual calcification was being broken down. Because of her presuppositions, Cassie needed not only to learn about God but also to unlearn what she falsely believed about God.”
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