The Sacred Romance: A Review

I've already blogged a bit about how this book has touched, stunned and struck me in some ways, but I've barely scratched the surface at the impact it has made. There is just so much more I could say about The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God by Brent Curtis & John Eldredge. If you haven't read this book, feel free to borrow it, that is if you don't mind the obsessive highlighting by yours truly. There is just a lot of good stuff in it. I'll give you some quotes to think over from the first couple of chapters...

“...a voice speaks to us in the midst of all we are doing. There is something missing in all of this, it suggests.There is something more.... We listen and we are aware of...a sigh. And under that sigh is something dangerous, something that feels adulterous and disloyal to the religion we are serving. We sense a passion deep within that threatens a total disregard for the program we are living; it feels reckless, wild.” (page 1)

“We tell ourselves that the malaise of spirit we feel even as we step up our religious activity is a sign of spiritual immaturity and we scold our heart for its lack of fervor. Sometime later, the voice in our heart dares to speak to us again, more insistently this time. Listen to me—there is something more in all this. You long to be in a love affair, an adventure. You were made for something more. You know it... Having so long been out of touch with our deepest longing, we fail to recognize the voice and the One who is calling to us through it. Frustrated by our heart's continuing sabotage of a dutiful Christian life, some of us silence the voice by locking our heart away in the attic, feeding it only the bread and water of duty and obligation until it is almost dead...Come morning, the new day's activities scream for our attention, the sound of the cry is gone, and we congratulate ourselves on finally overcoming the flesh.”
(page 2)

“...the Christian life is a love affair of the heart. It cannot be lived primarily as a set of principles or ethics. It cannot be managed with steps and programs. It cannot be lived exclusively as a moral code leading to righteousness.” (page 8)

“In all of our hearts lies a longing for a Sacred Romance. It will not go away in spite of our efforts over to years to anesthetize or ignore its song, or attach it to a single person or endeavor...The deepest part of our heart longs to be bound together in some heroic purpose with others of like mind and spirit....the Romance has most often come to us in the form of two deep desires: the longing for adventure that requires something of us, and the desire for intimacy--to have someone truly know us for ourselves...” (page 19)