Seasons of Grace
Gregory Popcak has done it again!
Already, I’m a fangirl: I love his radio show, and I trust his books on marriage and family to be theologically sound, energetically written, and inspiring. So it was an honor to be invited to participate in the Blog Tour for his latest title, Broken Gods: Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart.
* * * * *
So, folks, let me tell you why you want to read this book. We’re all broken, right? I mean, we all have what Dr. Popcak calls a “holy longing”–a desire to be more than we are, to achieve more than we have, to come closer to being the perfected people that God created us to be.
Dr. Popcak invites us to imagine that we had really made it–that one day, we awoke to find that we had become perfect, immortal, utterly confident in who we were, where we were going in life, and how we were going to get there.
The seven longings he describes in this book are not what you might think. I mean, my first thoughts, if you asked me what people want, would be money, fame, sex… the usual, really unimportant things that clutter our minds. Greg Popcak cuts through the clutter of superficial desires to identify the things we REALLY want:
Not just wealth, but Abundance. Abundance can be defined, he explains, by the pursuit of three qualities: meaningfulness, intimacy, and virtue. And as he explains how these things hold the promise of real satisfaction, and how pride can interfere with our accomplishing the goals that will really make us happy, I found myself nodding–Yes, that’s it exactly!
The other longings are equally obvious, once you think about it, and equally elusive if we give in to the culture and follow the crowd in their quest for superficial treasures. Dr. Popcak’s list of divine longings includes Dignity, Justice, Peace, Trust, Well-Being, and Communion.
And for each of these goods, he describes the weaker imitation, the inferior pursuit which fails to satisfy. Instead of Communion, for example, some settle for lust–and it’s chastity which overcomes the distorted pursuit of lust and opens our hearts to the great good which God wants us to have.
The Exercises, the Goals and Action Items help to make personal the tasks Popcak recommends. Don’t be afraid, he says, echoing the phrase so commonly associated with our beloved St. John Paul II. Give to God all the deepest longings of your heart every day. He knows that beyond the sins, and the brokenness, and the same is something beautiful, something divine, and he has sacrificed everything to show you how beautiful you are, and how much more beautiful you can become if you will just place his heart next to yours.
Looking for a pep talk to help you along your spiritual walk? Check out Broken Gods for yourself.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In