Where Are You?

If you were to ask me if I would consider myself a morning person I would have to say no but I use to be. Somewhere along the way to twenty-four I lost my appreciation of the morning, and to be honest I am not sure why? Perhaps it might have been from the fact that in college I had to get up early for class some mornings and so those mornings that I did not have to wake up for class I rebelled by staying in bed as long as I could. I guess I need to force a revolution of my thinking. “Viva la révolution de ma pensée”, I know very little french but long live the revolution of my thinking is something I do, sorta. Sometimes I just need to rethink how I’m thinking, to stop making excuses and redefine why I do what I do.

This morning I started my day with coffee, a doughnut and some more coffee in my warm office sitting back in my much to large chair reading a book by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Henri was a former catholic priest and theology professor who spent his final years working with the mentally and physically disabled. I have read a few of this books and find his insites to be thought provoking and challenging to my spiritual growth.

As I was reading I came to this quote, “To live a disciplined life is to live in such a way that you want only to be where God is with you” (The Inner Voice of Love, pg 23). Sometimes in the morning when I wake up I ask myself “Where am I?” as I come to in the reality of the day. But perhaps there is a deeper question of “Do I find that where I am, God is there also?”. Thats a hard question that doesn’t come with a quick answer. Do I find myself in a place where God is?

Henri began this page in the book by writing, “When we experience a great need for human affection, you have to ask yourself whether the circumstances surrounding you and the people you are with are truly where God wants you to be” (pg 23). We all long for love, it’s a part of what makes us human but where we find that love is critical to how our lives are shaped and lived. We long for deep human affection and I believe God uses people to show us his love but are we really where God wants us to be?

I know from some of my experiences that I have been in places of great emptiness and there I just find a void of what my heart really needed. It’s hard to be in those places but we don’t have to stay there, there are times we fear change and fear being challenged to think differently. However, if we don’t ask the hard question of is this really where God wants me we may never move on.

This reminds me of Peter and how jesus called him to follow him. Peter had the choice to stay where he was and keep fishing all his life. He probably had a well established market for his fish, he had friends, family, and all the comforts

he could afford in the first century A.D. , but he had to stop and ask the question “Is this where God wants me to be, is this the place, are these the people, is this what I am suppose to do? I am sure Jesus saying come follow me threw him off his routine but Peter’s response was without hesitation, he moved to where God was and lived in a such a way that he wanted to be with Jesus.

Later when Jesus is walking on the water Peter ask’s jesus to call him out on the water, he wants to Go with jesus even if it’s scary and challenging. Peter was willing to Question whether being in the boat was where God wanted him to be or not? He was willing to trust that God was going to provide a way to walk on water. Each day we wake up and ask God is this where I am suppose to be today, if you want me out on the water call me there and I trust you will provide a way. We long deeply for love, we long even deeper to be where God is. Ask the hard questions, challenge your thinking and find out where God wants you to be. He is already there going before us we just have to get out of the boat.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

 

Day 28 “A Year of Thoughts”: Eat this book

“Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated taken into the soul- eaten, chewed, gnawed, and received in unhurried delight.”- Eugene H. Peterson

This quote is one of the many that has stood out to me as I have had the opportunity to read Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading by Eugene H. Peterson. If you were able to see either my dorm room or my room back in Indiana you would find shelves, drawers and stacks of books. Some of them I have read and reread. Some wait their turn to be read and some may someday be opened for the first time. But reading is a gift. One of the early points that Peterson makes in this book is that the Bible is not simply another book.

Growing up in family that reads, a lot, I have been around books and have heard the continence of the Bible from a very young age, but it’s not about the books that you read but how you respond. Peterson’s in this book is trying to explain that eating the Bible is not a book that you can read and not respond to. It should move you, effect you and change you. Reading is a gift but scriptural reading needs to go deeper than a surface level. It needs to be eaten, chewed, gnawed, and taken in a way that is refreshing and nurturing to our souls.

I understand this now, that reading is like eating. You take in the information, but you can’t stop there. You can’t just take in the food without digesting it. It’s pointless to shove a banana down your throat without chewing it first. Your body was not made for steak to be taken in and passed right through, likewise Peterson continually reminds us in this book that we are meant to consume God’s word for more than just the mere means of saying we have read it. We must eat it. It would be unfortunate to have read the Bible or any book for that matter and not be in some way challenged or changed.

Our culture feeds off the mindless activities that do not have any intention of moving our souls to wake up and to thrive. Reading the Bible should not be a mindless activity that leaves us with no reason or place to respond. In the words of Peterson “In our reading of this book we come to realize that what we need is not primarily informational, telling us things about God and ourselves, but formational, shaping us into our true being”(pg 24). When we are able to move from just reading to being transformed by the words applied to our lives, that is the point.

We become more out of our reading. It is not all about knowing. What we take in through our minds should penetrate our hearts. Through all the translations of the Bible we have found that the words have become readable for almost anyone in any country, however, Peterson alludes to the text as being more than readable. It should be livable. It is liveable. “The Bible… is the text for living our lives. It reveals a God-created, God-ordered, God-blessed world in which we find ourselves at home and whole”(pg 18).

Peterson, writes of the example in the apostle John being given the command to eat the book that is given to him by the angel. He did not deny the fact that the very words that he was writing must be consumed and lived out through his life. John experienced the gospel first hand. He lived with Jesus and learned to make his teaching a part of his life. John ministered to the broken and poor. He lived the words of Christ. He took them in and ate them, not to simply survive but the thrive and to show Christ to the very world that he lived in.

“Eating a book takes it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives”(pg 20). To follow the example of John is our goal and challenge that Peterson puts forth. But how do we do that? How do we move from just being a reader to being an eater? Moving from just consuming for the knowledge of knowing all the words of the text to assimilating them into our lives. First we must allow the Holy trinity to work through our reading. We have to keep it personal, real, honest and applicable to our lives today. It seems easy to say but harder to do.

We must allow God to speak through the scriptures. It is his voice that we hear in the words and should lead us to live them out. God is at his core relational so it would only make sense that when he calls us to take in his words and apply them it is in a personally relational way. When we eat the scripture we are participating in that relationship. There is this personal understanding that God can work through and in our lives. When we can understand that God can work in us and change us, the text becomes almost in a sense more eatable, more applicable, and more personal.

Peterson gives a great example of the tool of Lectio Divina. Simply put Lectio Divina is practice of or way of reading the scriptures that guards us from doing so in a depersonalized way. The opposite of this kind of reading would be skimming simple to take credit for reading something. Lectio Divina is more than that. It’s a deeper more personal reading of the text. It’s slow. It goes against our consumer mindset of devouring what we read with no assimilation or growth. We consume the text through spiritual reading. Lectio Divina means spiritual reading.

How do we spiritual read something? For centuries the practice of Lectio Divina was carried out in a slow and contemplative way. Contemplative means to slow down and take in. Like eating again contemplative spiritual reading is reading that is meant to nourish and become a way of living. There are four parts to spiritual reading. The reading, the mediation, the prayer, and contemplation.

The reading as Peterson explained through most of the first half of the book is getting in the word and chewing on it. Reading may be understanding the context, style or way in which it was written and pouring through that reading. An example of this for me is taking a pen to what I am reading, writing between the line or underling the voice that seems to be speaking through the text. This reading takes intention and openness to grasp the many metaphors of scripture.

This openness and understanding is carried over to the second part of the spiritual reading which is mediation. This is often where we have to think upon the text and allow God to reveal himself through it. Going back to the Peterson quote, “The Bible… is the text for living our lives. It reveals a God-created, God-ordered, God-blessed world in which we find ourselves at home and whole”(pg 18). When we are reading we have to listen for God’s voice in our lives, that shows through when we mediate and continue to eat the words slowly.

This mediation of the text is also paired with prayer. Prayer is the third step of the spiritual reading. From my understanding of the reading this book, prayer is a part of the relational and personal act of interacting with the text and God speaking into us. In prayer we are in conversation with God over the text and allowing him to move through our words and requests. “Prayer is language used in relation to God… the most universal language, the lingua franca of the human heart”(pg 103).

It’s from prayer that we move to contemplation. This almost a soaking in of the reading, prayer and mediation. In contemplation we might do all the other steps again, but ultimately contemplation should move us to application. Where the text is integrated into our lives. It become not only what we have read but what we are living. That is what the Bible calls us to, is to live it.

In the closing chapters of Peterson’s book he writes about the many translations that have come over time. However, through all of those translations the message has stayed the same. The story from Genesis to Revelation is still the same and it still call us to live. To eat this book and find true life in our savior Jesus Christ.

In all I really enjoyed reading this book and have found it very helpful in my understanding and application of spiritual reading. It challenges me to eat what I read. To take it in and apply it. Reading is not always the problem, moving to a place where the reading becomes life is the challenge. Peterson through his book Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading has challenged me to rediscover my passion for reading the scripture, but not only reading it but living it.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

P.S. sorry for the length of this post but my hope is that you might be able to take something away from this as I have.