On Living Well: Brief Reflections on Wisdom for Walking in the Way of Jesus
240On Living Well: Brief Reflections on Wisdom for Walking in the Way of Jesus
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Overview
“Calming, encouraging, and profound.”—Matt Chandler, lead pastor of The Village Church
“Jesus’ words bring us the news of an expanded world, a bright world, a full-dimensioned world, a world in which God rules, mercy is common experience, and love is the daily working agenda.”
Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) was one of the most beloved authors, pastors, poets, and professors of our time. While millions have read his bestselling paraphrased Bible translation, The Message, far fewer have heard his direct practical insights and wisdom about how to live well.
Eugene knew the extraordinary spirituality of ordinary life. He understood that we actually become more, not less, human as we grow to live like Jesus. And living like Jesus means living well.
On Living Well collects some of Eugene’s best never-before-published short writings to help you walk in the way of Jesus with a little more courage, passion, and hope—by offering new ways to practice generosity, community, prayer, simplicity, worship, inner peace, and so much more . . . even with the challenges of today.
This book is a rich feast for the soul, ideal as a daily spiritual touchpoint or simply to nourish a heart hungry for pastoral wisdom. It is your invitation to enter into the meaningful simplicity of life with Jesus in a world of immense beauty, real difficulty, and endless wonder.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781601429803 |
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Publisher: | The Crown Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 11/16/2021 |
Sold by: | Random House |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 240 |
Sales rank: | 1,012,300 |
File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Word Was First
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.
Jeremiah 1:5
The Word was first. The Word was previous to everything else. Before we were conceived and took shape in our mothers’ wombs, before we were born, before anything happened, there was the Word.
Before there was a sun or a moon or stars, there was the Word. Before there were trees and flowers and fish, there was the Word. Before there were governments and hospitals and schools, there was the Word.
If the Word were not first, everything would have gone awry. If the Word were second—or third or fourth—we would have lost touch with the deep, divine rhythms of creation. If the Word were pushed out of the way and made to be a servant to the action and program, we would have lost connection with the vast interior springs of redemption that flow out of our Lord, the Word made flesh.
When the Word is treated casually or carelessly, we wander away from the essential personal intimacies that God creates . . . by his Word.
On Birth
Every birth is a wonder. The world is invaded by life. Space and time are penetrated by being. Emptiness is displaced by shape and movement. Silence is filled with tone and melody. Solitude becomes society. A birth produces tremors and shakes us in the depths of our person, moving our very universe.
Uncalculated energies are released; unpredictable creations are formed. We are moved by those energies, changed by them, and loosed from death and plunged into life by them. Birth is both a physical experience and a faith event.
Our first birth thrusts us kicking and squalling into the light of day. Our second birth places us singing and believing in the light of God. By acts of love previous to us, we are launched into ways of seeing and being that become truly ours. We are launched into life.
Though an everyday reality, birth is always awesome, whether as a new baby in the world or as a new creature in Christ.
We Are Not Stuck
Distracted, inconstant people like us need a large attention-getting device for noticing the main show, seeing the huge God-dimensions of our lives, and listening to the large God-story into which all our stories fit.
There is much about those stories that we, of course, cannot change. We cannot change our heights or our ages. We cannot change our basic intelligences. We cannot change our places of birth or our parentages. We can, at best, make modifications on only our bodily shapes and emotional temperaments. There is a great deal of sheer givenness in our lives, circumstances, and conditions that we must deal with as it is.
Frequently, we project fantasies of what we want onto the church and then walk away grumpy because we don’t find what we expect. Other times, we become paralyzed with guilt because we feel the church isn’t living up to its calling, but all our guilt does is drain more energy out of us. What we simply must do is attend to what is going on—this Holy Spirit work that is continuous between the Acts of the Apostles and the acts of the Christians of our community, here in our place, now in our time.
But still, we are not stuck with these lives of ours the way they are. We can change—can be changed. That is the promise of God in Jesus Christ and the experience that is at the heart of Christian living: conversion.
What this means is simple. At the center, at the core of our beings, change is possible. A change from being lost to found, a change from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, a change from anxiously grasping to confidently receiving the life of faith in Jesus Christ.
These changes are going on all around us. Sometimes they are taking place in us. An American view of conversion sees it as characteristically sudden and dramatic, and if it isn’t sudden and dramatic, then it doesn’t qualify. But most conversions are long and quiet. We miss the drama of these stories because we are not sufficiently trained biblically to discern Spirit work.
You don’t have to stay the way you are.
On Growing
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.
Matthew 4:1–2
It is hard to be a human being. Of all the creatures in this world, we have the toughest task. It is easy to be a crocus: no decisions to make, no schedules to keep, and no disappointments to endure. The crocus sleeps all winter, and then as the snow recedes and the sun warms the earth, the crocus breaks through the ground with blossoms that bring standing applause from all of us. It is easy to be a cat: no anxieties about aging, no perplexities about world affairs, and no guilt about real or imagined adulteries. The cat grooms itself on the carpet, purrs on any convenient lap, and holds the opinions of the servile humans in haughty disdain.
But being human is not easy. Not at all easy. The seasons do not automatically develop us into maturity. Our instincts do not naturally guide us into a superior contentment. We falter and fail. We doubt and question. We work and learn. And just when we think we have it figured out, something else comes up that throws us for a loop.
Jesus is the best look we have at what it means to be human—really human. We look at him and see the incredible attractiveness and profound wonder of being a woman or a man. We also see how difficult it is. We see him in contest against every force that would diminish us into something less than human. We see him confront and deal with every influence that would divert us from living to the glory of God.
We get our basic orientation in the difficulties of being human by carefully attending to what Jesus said and did in his forty days of temptation and testing in the wilderness. To become like him, we must be changed, shaped, and deepened by the Word of God.
Fresh Salt
Remember the words of our Lord when he said, “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” (Luke 14:34).
The answer to his question is simple.
It can’t.
You have to go back to the salt mines. You have to dig some fresh salt.
Table of Contents
Foreword ix
Editor's Note xix
Introduction xxi
Part 1 On Beginnings
The Word Was First 3
On Birth 4
We Are Not Stuck 5
On Growing 7
Fresh Salt 9
Saints, Not Cogwheels 10
An Unanswered Question 11
On Square Pegs 12
Death, Then Life 13
Becoming Basic 14
On Seeds 16
On Growing Underground 18
The Good Life 19
Called to Wholeness 20
The Unspeakable Ordinary 22
To Be, to Do 23
Do You Want to Be Healed? 24
The Expectant Life 26
Shaping Belief 28
On Living It Up 30
On Dreams and Visions 31
Leap, Live, Love 32
On Shouting for Crumbs 33
A Lavish God 34
The Struggle Makes Sense 35
Part 2 On Simplicity
A Welcoming 39
On the Overlook 40
On Being Biblical 41
On Doing Less 42
The Jesus Risk 43
Faith Is Not a Lobotomy 44
Possible Impossibilities 45
Ordinary Secrets 46
A Sudden Longing 48
Down-to-Earth Religion 50
On Religion and Faith 52
The Inside Story 53
A Packaged God Is No God at All 54
The Deeper Need 55
Ordinary Care 57
What Do We Do? 59
The Roots of the World 61
On Work 63
Necessary Words 64
How Much Reality? 66
Launched to Holiness 67
Three Short Thoughts on Direction 69
On Thinking and Thanking 70
Changes 71
Wisdom? Wealth? 72
We Are Not Exempt 74
This Is the Boldness 75
To Be with Jesus 76
On Stewardship 77
Holy Money 79
On Keeping God to Ourselves 81
And the Tongue Is a Fire 82
Do It Yourself 84
The Complete Reader 85
Epiphany of Trouble 87
Entering Salvation 90
Personal Best 91
If I Get Caught Up, Who Will Be Your Pastor? 92
Getting Out the News 94
Part 3 On Prayers and Praises
On the Nature of a Congregation 99
Getting the Story Straight 100
Gospel Sensuality 101
Sharpened Pilgrims 103
Unwashed Holiness 104
First Steps 105
The Foundational Consequence 106
The Great Invisibles 107
Fragments of Worship 108
The Backward Word 109
The Vision Shows Us 111
On Growing from the Roots 112
On Light 113
Interior Experts 114
Little Prayer 115
Prayer from the Center 117
The Meeting 118
A New Label 119
Praying Toward the Center 120
The Responsibility of Words 121
Can There Be Conversation? 123
Prayer Companion 125
On Joy at Church 127
On Adequacy and Abundance 129
On Happiness 130
The Reality of Worship 132
Existence Illuminated 133
Honesty in Worship 134
The Word and Sacraments 135
The Spectator and the Death of Worship 137
The Habit of Faith 138
The Good News of Giving 139
Giving, the Style of the Universe 141
On the Bottom Line 142
Place of Worship, Place of Witness 143
Our Witness Is Required 145
On Sabbath 146
How to Keep a Sabbath 149
On Praying and Playing 151
God, Our Center and Circumference 152
Invitation, Not Manipulation 153
Part 4 On Mercies
Beneath the Surface 157
The Root Rightness 159
Voice in the Action 160
The God Who Comes to Us 161
Creation and Becoming 163
New Life and Holy Luck 164
A Different Freedom 165
The Appointment 166
On Connections 167
On Pentecost and Dry Bones 168
All 170
A Serious Interruption 172
The Manner of Our Master 173
Interdependences 174
The Ministry of Things 175
Wreaths and Wheels 179
On Our Connection with the Whole Church 180
Toward a Good End 181
Part 5 On Glories
Resurrection Groundwork 185
The Resurrection Pivot 186
On the Consuming Fire 188
Vistas of the Holy 190
Lazarus in the Spring 192
The Water or the Wave? 194
Good Company 196
A Good Death 197
Resurrection Detectives 198
Upward, Undiminishing 200