I love Eugene Peterson’s Conversations, which integrates The Message Bible and commentaries and devotions from Peterson.

Today I continue the examination of Romans 12 with his thoughts on worship:

“Here’s a basic tension:  We keep trying to confine worship to the sanctuary — to preaching, prayers, and parish announcements, to religious experiences.  But God is commanding us to extend it to home, work, neighborhood, and leisure.  Worship is the style of life in which our bodies become living sacrifices offered up before God.

People have different skills, different strengths, different sensibilities.  God has given us one another so that we may have a shared life.  None of us can live the abundant life as hermits.  Nor can we live to the glory of God if we carefully pick whom we’re willing to associate with.  All who live are God’s creation and parts of the body of Christ.  We’re members of one another.  We exist in a family, together, not alone.

And here’s how God wants us to live in such a family:  worshipfully.

Life is full of financial inequities, and worship involves a generous response to the economic needs of others.  This reverses the natural inclinations of all of us.  We sometimes convince ourselves that everything we have has come from our own hard work and achievements.  And with pride we then hold on to it all, and in moments of good, we’ll dole out a little to church or to charity.

But worship is meant to be more complete than that:  It’s the offering of our total economic selves to the glory and service of God.  It means a liberal and generous assessment of other people’s needs in relation to our own.  Income and earning capacity is God’s gift to us, too — and must be part of offering our lives.”

This is a great devotion from Peterson.  I’ll stop here and offer some more tomorrow.  But between now and then it seems like a good idea to reflect on the hard challenge put before us — how do we view our gifts, and how do we view our giving?