Day 81

No blogs for quite few days after our visit to Scotland at the weekend. We had a good time with the family and Annette enjoyed meeting cousins she hadn't seen for over 30 years. Such was the 'cousinly' conversation and showing of family photographs that the time sped past and before we knew it we were being reminded that the restaurant was about to close at midnight. It is the first time I have been thrown out of a restaurant at closing time!

Over the past few days I have continued to work on some writing up of what I have been reading.

Here are a few of the quotes from the three Eugene Peterson books -

“Spiritual Theology is about living the Christian life. It is not some text or technique or programme and is about God and not us.”

“The doctrine of the Trinity is vital because it prevents us from reducing God to what we can understand or need at any one time. We are in the presence of the One who is both before us and beyond us. We need to listen and wait. Trinity is a steady call and invitation to participate in the energetically active life of God.”

“Community is vital but is often difficult.” Peterson uses the example of the Israelites on the journey following the Exodus and suggests ‘getting saved was easy, becoming a community was much more difficult’.

Faith is not an explanation, it is a passion

In describing the experience of Isaiah in the Temple the author reminds us that “ 'holy, holy, holy' is not Christian needlepoint - holiness is dangerous, exhilarating.”

“The holy is not that which we can market or produce or control on our terms. We, like Isaiah (and Moses and John on Patmos) can only respond.”

“Jesus, who in abridged form is quite popular with the non-church crowd, was not anti-institutional. Jesus said "Follow me," and then regularly led his followers into the two primary religious institutional structures of his day: the syna­gogue and the temple. Neither institution was without its inadequa­cies, faults, and failures.”

“a spirituality that has no institutional structures or support very soon becomes self indulgent and subjective and one generational.”

Sadly - International football has not brought much joy to north and south of the border over the past few days!