Day 19

In the final chapters of this book Peterson writes about the need to translate the Word of God into the language of the people. He tells how he came to produce his widely used paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, in order to do just that. A vital task of the Church is to speak the Word of God in a language the people can understand. That brings us back to the central theme of this book - the need to take the message into ourselves and live it.

Peterson suggests that, in his opinion, there is some irony in that the King James Version of the Bible is still the best selling edition throughout the world and yet it was written in the kind of language used by the royal court of James and not the everyday language of the people at that time. It is certainly not written in the everyday language of our day and age! Is it possible that this version is still popular because it may be used at times to keep the word at a safe distance because the language and expression is not what we use in our daily lives?

Peterson himself has a great gift for language and this comes across in his writing. He is passionate about communicating the Word and encourages the Christian Church to be equally committed to the Word and to making it available to the people around us.

Almost time now to put the books away for the weekend. Tomorrow it is off to the North of England open air museum at Beamish which has long been on the list of places we have wanted to visit.