One of my spiritual practices for this year is reading through the Bible in the form of The Message by Eugene H. Peterson.
I don’t know how many people besides me actually read through the intro section of their Bible (less than 1% is one guesstimate), but in this case I found it quite helpful since it describes the steps of lectio divina in plain English: “Read. Think. Pray. Live.”
Somehow that sounds less complicated than it does in Latin.
Read
“By jumping into the Bible, you open your eyes to God’s world and see how he includes you in his story.”
Think
“This is the five-star meal that you savor—with your mind, your heart, and your soul.”
Pray
“Allow this to be a time in which God speaks to you and you actively seek him.”
Live
“When you live the Word, you truly live.”
In my reading of The Message, I don’t always practice lectiodivina—sometimes I read for the broad sweep of Scripture (e.g., Genesis, Exodus), sometimes I read for the beauty of the language (e.g., the Psalms, as in Psalm 51:10: “God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life”—isn’t that a wonderful way of putting it?).
But sometimes I practice lectio divina in plain English. The other day as I readPsalm 72, I was especially drawn to the last verse: “All earth brims with [God’s] glory. Yes and Yes and Yes.” It made me think about the morning sunshine as I had been out in the garden even before I sat down to read. What a great God who created the sunshine, the heather in full bloom, the rhododendron buds swelling but not yet ready to unfold their brilliant red. I felt moved to pray and praise God, and when I read this text I wondered, what will be my Yes to God today? How will I live out my yes and yes and yes?
The intro to The Message says:
In lectio divina, reading, thinking, and praying come together within us, become part of us, and are lived out even beyond our awareness—like the way a baseball player swings a bat or catches a ball or the way a violinist performs a concerto. Over time, soaking in God’s word leads to our living out those words without even thinking about them.
I stumble over that last part—“without even thinking about them.” I agree that there is something about Scripture that is formative, that God changes me as I read, but does it actually happen “without even thinking”? Perhaps it’s rather “beyond my thinking” or “even more than my thinking”?
However God is at work, I receive it with a grateful yes and yes and yes.
