by Elizabeth | Jun 8, 2011 | Learning Story
The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation. itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Romans 8:19- 21
I wrote this blog yesterday, then had two discussions with people about Christianity and our call to steward creation, then woke up to the sound of a bulldozer moving sand on the beach, so I figured, yeah, it’s relevant:
Does living the Christian story have anything to do with environmentalism, and if so, what? Just read a very helpful article on the topic in Christianity Today with two folks who are thinking hard about the matter, Peter Harris and Eugene Peterson. Listen to Harris’ encouragement:
If you believe you’re going to be able, by technology, by political force, by whatever means, to save the planet, you may well get disillusioned and exhausted and depressed. these are genuine problems within the environmental movement.
If, on the other hand, you do what you do because you believe it pleases the living God, who is the Creator and whose handiwork this is, your perspective is very different…i do think it gives God tremendous pleasure when his people do what they were created to do, which is care for what He has made.
My heart’s desire for the new Bible study, which, yes, really exists, as confirmed yesterday in the bookstore at General Assembly:), is to get people “Living the Story.” As a community working through this study together and as individuals. , people will be called and given opportunity to think of creative ways to live out what we were created to do.
You can read excerpts from Learning God’s Story of Grace here.
by Elizabeth | Apr 19, 2011 | Learning Story
I found my invitation to the Royal Wedding on Google:)
If this were the last week of your life, how would you spend it? This question always comes to mind as I read in awe the events of the last week of Jesus’ life. Part of it he spent answering malicious questions from people wanting to kill him. Not only did he answer them, he did so with complete and utter perfection, and mostly he used stories to make his point — which was, to sum it up shortly, “God is God, and you are not.”
Prince William of England is marrying Catherine Middleton on April 29, 2011. If you were invited to this royal wedding, would you turn down the invitation? In Matthew 22, Jesus tells the story of the Wedding Banquet, which is utterly befuddling without some understanding of Middle Eastern weddings. Eugene Peterson explains that when a marriage is announced, people stop what they’re doing and go. It would be unfathomable not to go, which is what makes this story so attention-grabbing to its original hearers. NO ONE would NOT go to the wedding feast.
Read this amazing story in Matthew 22:1-14.
Here is the question Peterson asks us to consider about how we respond to God’s invitation:
“We make the judgment on ourselves. God has invited us to come to him and has prepared a feast for us to share. And we take it lightly. We make excuses. Or we’re so far out of touch with reality that we actually scoff at or even destroy the messengers who deliver the invitation. God is the reality with whom we have to deal. Life is the banquet he has prepared. How many of our actions are a refusal to come to him and a rejection of his presence with us?” Eugene Peterson, Conversations
Lord, you invite me to come to you, to quit trying to carry my own burden of sin, to lay it all at your feet as a filthy offering that you have transformed into righteousness through the blood of Jesus Christ, your only son. But the good news is even more amazing…you have invited me to party with you over this ridiculously good news! I’ll admit, Lord, in my worldly way of thinking, this story makes no sense to me. You are an AWE-SUM God, the sum of awe. Forgive me for my waywardness, and keep me close to you, celebrating the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ! In the name of your ever-astonishing son, Jesus Christ, Amen!
by Elizabeth | Jun 12, 2010 | Learning Story
Two more of Peterson’s poems on the Beatitudes:
IV. The Lucky Hungry
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness”
Unfeathered unbelief would fall
Through the layered fullness of thermal
Updrafts like a rock; this red-tailed
Hawk drifts and slides, unhurried
Though hungry, lazily scornful
Of easy meals off carrion junk,
Expertly waiting elusive provisioned
Prey: a visible emptiness
Above an invisible plenitude.
The sun paints the Japanese
Fantail copper, etching
Feathers against the big sky
To my eye’s delight, and blesses
The better-sighted bird with a shaft
Of light that targets a rattler
In a Genesis-destined death.
V. The Lucky Merciful
“Blessed are the merciful”
A billion years of pummeling surf,
Shipwrecking seachanges and Jonah storms
Made ungiving, unforgiving granite
Into this analgesic beach:
Washed by sea-swell rhythms of mercy,
Merciful relief from city
Concrete. Uncondemned, discalceate,
I’m ankle deep in Assateague sands,
Awake to rich designs of compassion
Patterned in the pillowing dunes.
Sandpipers and gulls in skittering,
Precise formation devoutly attend
My salt and holy solitude,
Then feed and fly along the moving,
Imprecise ebb- and rip-tide
Border dividing care from death.
Eugene Peterson, Theology Today
by Elizabeth | May 7, 2010 | Learning Story
More from Romans 13: The law we must obey; the debt we should accumulate: LOVE.
“Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.” Romans 13:8-10, The Message
Love is the word for a relationship between people. Christian love is the kid of love in which I am concerned for others and do what needs to be done to make their lives complete. The GReek word for this is agape. It is giving-love. It’s this love that the Bible is concerned with when it tells us to ‘love others’ (Matthew 22:39). This is the love Paul uses as the key to making our ethical decisions. If we put this love in the driver’s seat, we’ll be able to make decisions that will produce a Christian life that’s pleasing to God. We see this new love in Jesus. By looking at him, we can find out just how love shapes ethical decisions. Jesus, it would seem, was oblivious to rules and regulations in his decision making. His question was always, “How can I act so that this person becomes the person God wants him to be?” Eugene Peterson, Conversations: The Message Bible and Its Translator
by Elizabeth | Apr 28, 2010 | Learning Story
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?
The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.
