The Message Prayerful Reading Bible Sampler - Flipbook - Page 9
A9
HOW TO GET THE MOST
OUT OF THIS BOOK
God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a
piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit . . . we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives
gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters
our lives and we become like him.
2 CO R I N T H I A N S 3:16-18, T H E M ESS AG E
“The Bible is not only written about us but to us,” Eugene Peterson writes
in the introduction to The Message. “In these pages we become insiders
to a conversation in which God uses words to form and bless us, to teach
and guide us, to forgive and save us.”
This is not a new idea from Eugene, but rather his expression of the ancient
Christian understanding of how we encounter God through Scripture. The
spiritual discipline of lectio divina (“holy/sacred/divine reading”) has been
a principal means for generations of Christians to experience this divine
encounter through the pages of the Bible:
• pausing for a moment and preparing to encounter God (silencio, or
“stop”)
• doing a first reading and then making observations of the text (lectio, or
“read”)
• reflecting on what we observed in our reading of the text and in ourselves
as we read (meditatio, or “ponder”)
• engaging in conversation with God inspired by the text (oratio, or “pray”)
• taking note of what this time with God has brought to the surface
(contemplatio, or “reflect”), and finally,
• considering how this time with God translates into our lives with God
(incarnatio, or “live”)