Lap Up These Words

"Scripture's task is to tell people, at the risk of their displeasure, the mystery of God and the secrets of their own hearts - to speak out and make a clean breast. There are many ways to say and write these truths: in oracles, in poems, in novels, in sermons, in satire, in journalism, in drama. Honestly written and courageously presented words reveal reality and expose our selfish attempts to violate beauty, manipulate goodness and dominate people, all the while defying God. Most of us most of the time, whether consciously or not, live this way. Honest writing shows us how badly we are living and how good life is. Enlightenment is not without pain. But the pain, accepted and endured is not a maiming but a purging. "Every significant utterance is a wound, but 'faithful are the wounds of a friend.'"

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Jeremiah was directed: "Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken...It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I intend to do to them, so that every one may turn from his evil way, and that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin" (Jer 36:2-3). God has something to say, and he wants us to know what it is. He is not secretive, delighting in keeping us in the dark; he reveals. He reveals in a form that is accessible to us: take a scroll - the word is to be written on everyday material, parchment or papyrus, the same kind of material we use for sending thank-you notes and making up shopping lists. Then the process is outlined: write develops into hear which develops into turn which develops into forgive.

Another book of Scripture is brought into existence. But this Scripture is not now a static phenomenon, a thing that we can handle at our pleasure or for our pleasure. It is a vortex of swiftly moving energies constituted by these five verbs (take, write, hear, turn, forgive). This vortex makes God's words visible and audible and draws human life into responsiveness.

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We live on the gossip of the moment and the rumors of the hour. It is not as if we never hear the truth at all, but we don't realise its overwhelming significance. It is an extra, an aside. We have no sense of continuity. We respond to whims, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Then Scripture is placed before us. Words are assembled and arranged, and powerful patterns of truth become visible. The sermon that moved us to repentance ten years ago but then was forgotten in the press of business, the prayer that lifted us to new hope at a time of crisis but has since been buried under failures and disappointments - these words, along with many others that we had never known before, come before us in such a way that everything becomes coherent in their presence. Amnesia is replaced by recognition. Distraction is gathered into attention. Jeremiah dictates. Baruch writes. The syntax gives shape and the metaphors give focus to God's word."

- Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses