Three in One, Potter and Peterson

I finished Delighting in The Trinity on Friday,  I was challenged by some of the thoughts in the book; one that really struck me was the following:

We were made in the image of the triune God. We find our identity through relationships. Just as there is both unity and plurality in God, so communal identity should not suppress individual identity and individual identity should not suppress communal identity. Through our union with Christ by faith, Christians are being remade in the image of the triune God. The church should be a community of unity without uniformity and diversity without division.

The idea that our identity is formed in relationship to others and not in opposition to them (or attributes alone) is brilliant and paradigm shifting! From there I went on to finish off the Harry Potter series, reading The Deathly Hollow. I laughed, I cried, I felt a whole spectrum of emotions <> I really did tear up when Dobbie the house Elf died, my thoughts were confirmed when Snape passed his thoughts off to Harry and also for the last few chapters of the book I had to pause for a bit at the end of each one so I could calm down.

Enough about Potter though, I started reading Tell it Slant: a conversation on the language of Jesus in his stories and prayers (Eugene Peterson); I am super excited about this book, it has been hanging around on my book shelf for a month or two now, slowly wiggling its way to the edge of my shelf, begging to be devoured! As stated in the introduction, here is what Peterson is going to hash out with Tell it Slant:

God does not compartmentalize our lives into religious and secular. Why do we? I want to insist on a continuity of language between the words we use in Bible studies and the words we use when we're out fishing for rainbow trout. I want to cultivate a sense of continuity  between the prayers we offer to God and the conversations we have with the people we speak to and who speak to us. I want to nurture an awareness of the sanctity of words, the holy gift of language, regardless of whether it is directed vertically or horizontally. Just as Jesus did.

Bam; who doesn't want that continuity in their lives?


Off to read.


df