LIVING THE STORY INCLUDES EVERY MOMENT OF THE DAY
“Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers.” Deuteronomy 8:1
Have you ever noticed how many “today”‘s and “this day”‘s are in the book of Deuteronomy? I never had, until I read this introduction by Eugene Peterson. I get jazzed about Living THE STORY — about what it means to take the Words on the Page of the Bible and walk right into TODAY living them. Don’t get me wrong — that doesn’t mean I’m going to get everything right. But the Word also has Words about people not getting things right. What it does mean is that I have Hope for the many moments when things in the day go wrong. This is a great word to preachers and teachers, but even more a great word for all of us:
“This sermon does what all sermons are intended to do: Take God’s words, written and spoken in the past, take the human experience, ancestral and personal, of the listening congregation, then reproduce the words and experience as a single event right now, in this present moment. No word that God has spoken is a mere literary artifact to be studied; no human experience is dead history merely to be regretted or admired. The continuous and insistent Mosaic repetitions of ‘today’ and ‘this day’ throughout these sermons keep attentions taut and responsive. The complete range of human experience is brought to life and salvation by the full revelation of God: Live this! Now!”
Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Deuteronomy in the Message.
I challenge myself and invite you into the challenge — let’s LIVE this Word TODAY!
