Living Story Grace

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

"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?

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.

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!

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