First of all, thanks to The Ooze Viral Blogging network for inviting me to read and review selections about the Spiritual Life.

My first book, The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning, came in yesterday’s mail.  I finished it in about an hour.  That should tell you a few things:

1. I liked it
2. It was readable
3. It wasn’t very long

All of those are true.  Manning’s style is poetic and distills his view that God’s primary attribute when it comes to relationship with each of us is a passionate longing.  The word furious means, in Manning’s eyes, a relentless focus and unwavering commitment to being in relationship with us all.

As with his previous work, particularly The Ragamuffin Gospel, Manning reminds the reader that God’s longing and love for us is based purely upon grace.  Grace, I learned in catechism, is ‘God’s unmerited favor towards us’.  This is at the heart of Manning reminding me, and telling some for the very first time, that there are no unlovable people in the eyes, mind or heart of God.

The author’s Christology is firmly rooted in the Jesus of John’s Gospel but is not ‘flat’ in that respect.  He calls upon the Beatitudes and selections from the Lucan narrative to offer a multi-dimensional Jesus that is an attractive alternative for those who find the hypocrisy, materialism and elitism of some expressions of Church off-putting and shallow.  To paraphrase Manning:

Jesus did not become poor, naked and suffer so that we could be rich, well-clothed and spared from suffering

The ‘consider this’ sections at the end of each short chapter invite reflection on his work and practical recommendations for how one might come to a place where God’s ‘furious longing’ is at the heart of our experience and moves out of our heads and into our hearts.

Pick up a copy, read it, and then heed the author’s plea to give it to someone desperately in need of God’s furious love and longing.