You know those days when your list of things to do runs out of the lines allotted on your planner? And then more is added by the moment with a few texts and phone calls?
This is one of them. Why, then, did I spend precious time reading my Bible and praying this morning. Eugene Peterson puts words to how the Bible works in my heart and is an urgent top priority “task” for such days:
Being a Christian and reading the Bible is not a way to get all your questions answered. There are few answers in the Bible. God is wanting to draw us into a relationship of faith, intimacy, and love. That doesn’t come through information alone. It comes through trust, obedience, and the willingness to be present in the mystery of God. It comes through letting Him reveal himself to us as we’re able to receive the revelation. If God just dumped all the answers on us at once, we probably couldn’t handle it. We’d misuse it. We’d think we had control of it now.”
“These are not words that we laboriously but impersonally study, as if for an exam. These are not words that we anxiously scan lest we inadvertently transgress a boundary or break a protocol. These are words we take in — words designed for shaping new life in us, feeding the energies of salvation. This delight develops into meditation — torah meditation.” Eugene Peterson, Christianity Today Interview
These are the words in my mouth;
these are what I chew on and pray.
Accept them when I place them
on the morning altar, O God, my Altar-Rock,
God, Priest-of-my-Altar.
Psalm 19:14, The Message
