Still not sure if you want to pick up Christopher West’s new book Fill These Hearts? Here is another sneak peak for you:

From CHAPTER 7: OUR BODIES TELL THE STORY

Several years ago a friend gave me a picture book called Magic Eye: Beyond 3D2 that promised to enable the viewer to “see what is invisible.” It was my first experience with stereograms— those amazing 3D images that look like a bunch of jumbled shapes and colors until you adjust your focus and gaze into them. At first it was frustrating. You really have to train your eyes to see in another way, to look through the two- dimensional surface. But once you do, all of a sudden the hidden image “pops” in 3D and you’re inside it. Whoa! There it is! And you wonder how you didn’t see it before, how it was right before your eyes but remained invisible.

Adjusting our focus to see into a stereogram is a great metaphor for what we’re trying to do in this book. Recall that our goal is to learn how to live our lives in 3D: to learn how to aim our desire according to God’s design so we can arrive at our eternal destiny. Our own lives, our own bodies as male and female, and the world all around us is like a stereogram. If we were to adjust our focus when we look at ourselves and the world, what hidden mysteries might “pop,” what might we see that we didn’t know we could see? We look at people and things all the time without seeing into them, and as a result we’re often stuck in a very flat, 2D vision of existence.

NATURE IS SINGING TO US

The intricate design of creation speaks of the intimate designs of the Creator: his plans, his purposes, and his invitation to men and women to enter into his own Mystery, his own Love and Life. All of creation tells the story, but, for the sake of example, have you ever taken Jesus up on his invitation to “consider how the wild flowers grow” (Luke 12:27)? What mystery might he be inviting us into here? I have a Catholic priest friend who’s a bit of a botanist with a mystical flair. He absolutely loves flowers. I once asked him what the attraction was, and he said dumbfounded, “Christopher, have you ever seen a flower?” “Of course I ha— ”— “No, no, no! I mean have you ever really seeeen a flower?” What follows is a window into the mystical view of creation he shared with me that day.

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Kathryn Jean Lopez gives it two thumbs up (in so many words)!