catapult magazine

catapult magazine
 

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Christian Living

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Sheri
Nov 15 2002
09:58 am

This is quite long, but it really struck me a being neat, and it sorta ends up covering a couple interesting points:
“Psalm 124 is an instance of a person who digs deeply into the trouble and finds there the presence of the God who is on our side. In the details of the conflict, in the minuteness of a personal history, the majestic greatness of God becomes revealed. Faith develops out of the most difficult aspects of our existence, not the easiest.
“The person of faith is not a person who has been born, luckily, with a good digestion and a sunny disposition. The assumption by outsiders that Christians are naive or protected is the opposite of the truth: Christians know more about the deep struggles of life than others, more about the ugliness of sin.
“A look to the heavens can bring a breathtaking sense of wonder and majesty and, if a person is a believer, a feeling of praise to the God who made heaven and earth. This psalm looks the other direction. It looks into the troubles of history, the anxiety of personal conflict and emotional trauma. And it sees there the God who is on our side, God our help….
“We speak our words of praise in a world that is hellish; we sing our songs of victory in a world where things get messy; we live our joy among people who neither understand nor encourage us. But the content of our lives is God, not humanity…. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives.
—Eugene H. Peterson, from pg. 79 of his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction