Introduction

So here I am starting over. Literally, figuratively, spiritually, emotionally. I went to get my Bible this morning, which I haven't spent much time with over the past many months, and I couldn't find it. I felt called to my bookshelf where my gaze rested on Eugene Peterson's masterpiece of the Bible in contemporary language..................................................................................................................... Start at the Beginning.................................................................. So I opened up to the Introduction to The Message. I don't usually read books this way. I don't think I've read any Bible's introduction page before, but right now, I need an introduction................................................................................................................. "Reading is the first thing, just reading the Bible. As we read we enter a new world of words and find ourselves in on a conversation in which God has the first and last words. We soon realize that we are included in the conversation. We didn't expect this. But this is precisely what generation after generation of Bible readers do find: The Bible is not only written about us but to us. In these pages we become insiders to a conversation in which God uses words to form and bless us, to teach and guide us, to forgive and save us. We aren't used to this. We are used to reading books that explain things, or tell us what to do, or inspire or entertain us. But this is different. This is a world of revelation. God revealing to people just like us- men and women created in God's image- how God works and what is going on in this world in which we find ourselves. At the same time that God reveals all this, God draws us in by invitation and command to participate in God's working life. We gradually (or suddenly) realize we are insiders in the most significant action of our time as God establishes His grand rule of love and justice on this earth (as it is in heaven). "Revelation" means that we are reading something we couldn't have guessed or figured out on our own. Revelation is what makes the Bible unique." (Eugene Peterson. Introduction to The Message).................................... And so I read the entire introduction. God is saying... "Come" in the most gentle yet enticing ways I have ever heard. And so it is my intent, to sit and read, leisurely and thoughtfully, and to listen with my heart as open as it ever has been. I need to "Get it". There is far more to this world than me. More than what I see and it all has to do with God. I am reading a book that will read me as I read it. I am being invited to make myself at home in the "World of God". I am being invited to read a book that was written in everyday language during its time. A book full of unspiritual characters and an "everyday Jesus". Bible world isn't "nicer world" or an ideal world. It's full of suffering and injustice and ugliness, not purged from the world in which He works and loves and saves. God works patiently and deeply, but often in hidden ways, in the mess of our humanity and history. I am not assured to get everything under my control. My 'dream world' is being exchanged for a real world of grace and mercy, sacrifice and love, freedom and joy, the God-saved world. (More from Eugene Peterson's Introduction to The Message.)..................... So, I choose to step forward past the introduction, and through the door of "Beginning".