A call to the real world of worship

In his lectures on "Biblical Spirituality" Eugene Peterson remembers that he received the biggest postbag of angry letters when he wrote an article criticising Myers-Briggs profiling. This surprised him as he didn't realise how it was so precious to people.

He probably got a bigger postbag after he endorsed The Shack though. I tried to find the Myers-Briggs article on the internet and failed. I did find this paragraph though:

Every call to worship is a call into the Real World. You’d think that by this time in my life I wouldn't need to be called anymore. But I do. I encounter such constant and widespread lying about reality each day and meet with such skilled and systematic distortion of the truth that I’m always in danger of losing my grip on reality. The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior. The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the eucharist my basic food. The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am.

(p. 28, Take and read: spiritual reading: an annotated list)

Trinitarian structures?

Eugene Peterson structures his course on "Biblical Spirituality" like the following boxes. He admits that there is a lot of bleed between them (e.g. that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in creation, justification and sanctification; and that creation, justification and sanctification are all of a piece, as is Christ's atoning work).

Given those caveats, is there enough distinction to use this as a structure? The early church in the creeds certainly agreed about the first two columns tying together in some way.

God the Father	Creation	Christ's birth
God the Son	Redemption	Christ's death
God the Holy Spirit	Holy Living	Christ's resurrection

Incidentally, I think, having just heard Tim Chester on Eschatology, I might add a fourth column:

God the Father	Creation	Christ's birth	First Creation
God the Son	Redemption	Christ's death	Death of Fallen Creation
God the Holy Spirit	Holy Living	Christ's resurrection	New Creation

...I don't know there are things I like and dislike.

Laying yourself out in prayer

[Our offering of ourselves]

The first thing we realize from the Psalms is that in prayer anything goes. Virtually everything human is appropriate as material for prayer:

• reflections and observations,
• fear and anger,
• guilt and sin,
• questions and doubts,
• needs and desires,
• praise and gratitude,
• suffering and death.

Nothing human is excluded. The Psalms are an extended refutation that prayer is being "nice" before God. Not at all - it is an offering of ourselves, just as we are.

[God's offering of himself]

The second thing is that prayer is access to everything that God is for us:

• holiness,
• justice,
• mercy,
• forgiveness,
• sovereignty,
• blessing,
• vindication,
• salvation,
• love,
• majesty,
• and glory.

The Psalms are a detailed demonstration that prayer brings us into the welcoming presence of God as he generously offers himself, just as he is, to us.

(formatting mine, p. 617, Eugene Peterson, "Prayer" in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible)

Travelling widely in our backyard

Mark Meynell quotes Eugene Peterson:

Henry David Thoreau, one of our canonized American sages, wrote of having "travelled a good deal in Concord" (the small New England village in which he spent his life). An item in the oral tradition that formed around Louis Agassiz, the celebrated Harvard biologist and professor, remembers that he returned to his classroom after the summer vacation and told his students that he had spent the summer travelling and made it halfway across his backyard. I want to hold out for travelling widely in Holy Scripture. For Scripture is the revelation of a world that is vast, far larger than the sin-stunted, self-constricted world that we construct for ourselves out of a garage-sale assemblage of texts.

(p.45, Eat This Book)

Isn't that beautiful? I want that too, but get easily distracted.

Martin Luther wanted us to do the same. He commented:

I would have been quite content to see my books, one and all remain in obscurity and go by the board. Among other reasons, I shudder to think of the example I am giving, for I am well aware how little the church has been profited since they have begun to collect many books and large libraries, in addition to and besides Holy Scriptures [...]

It was also our intention and hope, when we ourselves began to translate the Bible into German, that here should be less writing, and instead more studying and reading of the Scriptures. For all other writing is to lead the way into and point toward the Scriptures, as John the Baptist did toward Christ, saying, "He must increase, but I must decrease" [John 3:30], in order that each person may drink of the fresh spring himself [...]

My consolation is that, in time, my books will lie forgotten in the dust anyhow, especially if I (by God's grace) have written anything good.

(pp.7-8, "Preface to the Wittenberg Edition of Luther's German Writings" [1539] in Selected Writings of Martin Luther, Vol 1)

I've always found this a funny thing for such a voluminous writer to say. There are a few naiveties about the both Peterson and Luther describe things too (but they know that). Nevertheless, I want to be a person who drinks thirstily from the spring, even if that means I miss out on other things.