This morning as I was cooking breakfast I was listening to an interview from 2009 with Eugene Peterson. He’d used an analogy about how a dog chews on a bone, we can chew on the Word. Someone from the audience asked for an example of what that looks like in his life and he shared one. What really ignited in my spirit was that as Peterson shared his personal story, he said he’d been on the first 2 verses of Luke for the past three months. Somehow it was like this gave me context and permission to keep going over & over the same thing.
For me it’s been Psalm 131, specifically the second part of the second verse: “I’ve cultivated a quiet heart” (MSG). The amplified Bible puts it this way: “my soul is like a weaned child within me [composed and free from discontent]”. The Message paraphrase also compares that quiet heart to bing like a baby content in his mother’s arms. I’ve been thinking about how my youngest grandson, Dominic, looked the last time I saw him this past July. He was hanging out in Rachel’s arms and seemed so totally content. This concept of cultivating a quiet heart has really been gestating in the back of my mind since this past January…..
