by Elizabeth | Sep 18, 2012 | Learning Story
Rereading Genesis 12-22 in Eugene Peterson’s Conversations, I discovered many helpful insights. I really liked this one about reading Scripture to discover what CAN happen, not just what has happened:
“Simple as it is, that birth story [the one about Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac] sends an important message to people of faith, one that needs repeating over and over again. The message is that God invades us with new life, and that life changes who we are. God isn’t a means by which we solve problems. And he isn’t a means to avoid problems. God creates new life — he is a Creator of persons, not a Solver of problems.
We read Scripture — like this story of the birth of Isaac — not so much to find out what happened but to find out what can happen. We’re curious not about the past but about ourselves. Can he do it again? we wonder. Can he bring birth out of barrenness? Can he birth love out of a loveless marriage? Can he bring a viable business out of bankruptcy? Can he bring faith out of the barren womb of our unbelief?” Eugene Peterson, Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator
by Elizabeth | Jun 5, 2012 | Learning Story
This morning, in preparing for a story feast on summer stories, I opened Genesis 1 and 2 in Eugene Peterson’s The Message.
In this translation, Genesis 1:31 says,
“God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good!
It was evening, it was morning–
Day Six.”
Genesis 2:2-4 says,
“By the 7th day
God had finished his work.
On the 7th day
he rested from all his work.
God blessed the 7th day.
He made it a holy day
because on that day
he rested from his work,
all the creating God had done.”
About the same of rest, rhythm, and time, Eugene Peterson says:
“We were created to live rhythmically in the rhythms of creation…
The understanding and honoring of time is fundamental to the realization of who we are and how we live.Violations of sacred time become desecrations of our most intimate relationships with God and one another hours and days, weeks and months and years are the very stuff of holiness.
Time is the medium in which we do all living. When time is desecrated, life is desecrated. The most conspicuous evidences of this desecration are hurry and procrastination. Hurry turns away from the gift of time in a compulsive grasping for abstractions that it can possess and control. Procrastination is distracted from the gift of time and a lazy inattentiveness to the life of obedience and adoration by which we enter ‘the fullness of the time’ (Gal. 4:4). Whether by a hurried grasping or a procrastinating inattention, the holiness of time is violated.” Conversations: The Message Bible with Its Translator.
As a formerly “hurried-woman,” these words hit me hard. After three shoulder surgeries in two years, I am living in a season of imposed rest. The question for me is,”Will I called this rest good?” what about you? What time struggle are you currently living? Let’s take a few moments now to ask God to reveal himself intimately to us in this place. And let’s listen for his answer.
by Elizabeth | Mar 12, 2012 | Learning Story
Anyone need some Monday “hope”? Here’s a great reminder from Eugene Peterson:
“Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!” Romans 15:133, The Message
and this devotional from Peterson:
“Hope on the Line”
“Every day I put hope on the line. I don’t know one thing about the future. I don’t know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, personal, or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don’t know what the future holds for me, for those whom I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will and cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing separates me from Christ’s love.
God’s strong name is our help, the same God who made heaven and earth. Psalm 124:8“
From Eugene Peterson, Living the Message
by Elizabeth | Sep 9, 2011 | Learning Story
God is at the center of 'how to be'
Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.” Proverbs 2:1-5
ng.” Proverbs 2:1-2, The Message
Proverbs, as many know, is a book of Wisdom. Sometimes Wisdom (especially when capitalized) seems so far off, so intangible. And yet, it’s really a simple way of living. Listen to what Eugene Peterson says:
“Proverbs is a how-to book. The problem we have with it is that tells us how to do something we aren’t particularly interested in doing. It isn’t that we can’t understand what the proverbs say. It’s that we don’t want to do what they say, which means we have a motivation problem.
One of the ways to deal with that problem is to see that the goal of the ‘Fear-of-God’ isn’t competing with other legitimate goals in our lives but is rather a completing goal. It puts guts into the other things we’re doing. In a sense, what is being said here is that all of us want more than we have; all of us are nagged by an inner sense of incompleteness. What is missing, according to Proverbs, is the ‘FEar-of-God’ and the ‘Knowledge-of-God.’ Eugene Peterson, Conversations
by Elizabeth | Jul 19, 2011 | Learning Story
"Just put one foot in front of the other..."
Genesis 12:9. “Abram kept moving, steadily making his way south, to the Negev.” (The Message)
Continuing yesterday’s thought on the pilgrims who only saw the promise from a distance, I reread Abram/Abraham’s story this morning, found in Genesis 12-22. (Rotator cuff recovery allows for LOTS of reading time:). Eugene Peterson’s comment on Genesis 12:1-9 hits the mark:
“The great patriarch Abraham became great because of one thing: He lived by faith. He believed in a God he never saw. He obeyed a command that had no guarantees. He took the risk of traveling to a far country and living there as a stranger. His life was shaped by promises and lived in risk. I would like to live like that — but before I do, I want to know how it turned out. Did anything come of it? That’s the difference between living by faith and living by sight. Those living by sight need to see the entire map of the journey — where they will end up, where the dangers are, where the drop-offs are, and where the rest stops are. Those living by faith need only to know the next step.”
What ‘next step’ is God calling you to take right this minute?
