Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night

by Hunt, Gregory L., Ph.D.

• ISBN13: 9781936332076
• ISBN10: 1936332078
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-03
• Publisher: Bettie Youngs Books

Summary

'Blackbird singing in the dead of night ...Take these broken wings and learn to fly.' -the Beatles Dr. Greg Hunt had devoted nearly 30 years to congregational ministry, helping people experience God and find their way in life. Then came his crisis of faith and calling. He turns to God for guidance and clarity, but gets no answer. Neither his education#xE2;#xAC;#x1D;a Ph.D. in theology#xE2;#xAC;#x1D;nor his religious involvements#xE2;#xAC;#x1D;senior pastor of a multi-staff congregation, civically and denominationally engaged leader#xE2;#xAC;#x1D;could protect him against the disorienting impact of the experience. Days turned into months. Months became seasons. Seasons added up to a year, then two. He began to wonder if his faith had been delusional; was God even real? In the midst of his struggle, he tries a sometimes desperate experiment of devotion: could he have a personal encounter with God through the words of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew? The answer is startling, and changes his life entirely. Sometimes raw, always honest, and ultimately hopeful, Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night speaks to the spiritual longings of the human heart. It offers, not a tidy spiritual prescription, but a ragged record of the quest for God and the pursuit of a purposeful life. It's as much about the search for truth as it is finding it. #xE2;#xAC;#x1D;Naomi Judd, Award-winning singer, songwriter In this most beautiful memoir, Greg Hunt invites us into an unsettling time in his life, exposes the fault lines of faith, and describes the path he walked into and out of the dark. Thanks to the trail markers he leaves along the way, he makes it easier for us to find our way, too. #xE2;#xAC;#x1D;Susan M. Heim, co-author, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Devotional Stories for Women If you've ever felt perplexed by God's silence, then you will find this book utterly fascinating. #xE2;#xAC;#x1D;George Mason, Ph.D., Senior Pastor, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, TX

Excerpts

Are You There at All?When the time came for wrestling my vocational issues to the mat, I became acutely aware of this more fundamental problem. I experienced a kind of "dead silence.” The closest I can come to explaining it is by way of analogy: it felt like the spiritual version of what happens if you're in a room when the air handler shuts down. The hum in the background stops. The air grows still. The room gets stuffy. While before you had become desensitized to the sound of the hum you now are acutely aware of its absence.It's not an accident that in both Hebrew and Greek, the birth languages of Judeo-Christian faith, the word for Spirit can also be translated as "breath” and "wind.” God's Spirit breathes life into us-not just once, at our birth, but continuously. As the apostle Paul stated to one of his audiences, "In God we live and move and have our being.”The sense of this became apparent to me again when I no longer felt the breeze of the Spirit. Not only was God not "speaking” into my situation about the future; God was not "speaking” into my life at all.Now I had a disturbing double quandary on my hands. Had it been about a cloudy future only, I could have dealt with it much more easily. But it wasn't just a cloudy future; it was an unnerving now. In spiritual terms-in terms of my impression about that moment-I was alone. The Breath of Life was no longer breathing in me.These were the circumstances in which I carried on my life, work and relationships. My public persona persisted for the most part unfazed; but under the surface of my calm, engaged, usually upbeat demeanor, a disquieted, sometimes even terrifying sense of things took hold.At previous vocational turning points I had experienced God's presence and guidance in a variety of ways: through conversation with others, through reading, through times of reflection, and always also in what the Bible refers to as "a still small voice”-moments of clarity that seemed like God communicating directly into my inner ear. In 1995, for instance, the search committee of a well-respected church in another city-I was pastoring Holmeswood Baptist Church at the time-asked if it could present me to its members for election as senior pastor. My experience of the inner voice was a resounding YES. Even in the emotional ebb and flow of my life I assumed God's nearness. Not this time. Despite constant pleading, all I experienced was God's silence. Days turned into months. I felt utterly alone. Lost.