I’m reading Eugene Peterson’s Earth & Altar (1985). Just passing along an excerpt from it — words that have kept me thinking and praying in the midst of the violence I see and feel in our world and within me. Thinking and praying when I don’t know what else on earth I can do…
In case the picture is too fuzzy or to small for you to read, here is the text:
"...violence can neither be escaped nor wiped out...
prayer... makes a difference.
Prayer is not so much a way of dealing with what is wrong in the world or myself as a way of dealing with God in the world and in myself.
Prayer frees us from the assault of brute experience by setting us in the energies of grace experience.
In the process, the violence itself is changed.
Praying people have been successfully doing this for centuries in every part of the world, and they continue with incalculable impact. That journalists do not report their actions or their effects does not diminish the strength of their persistent peacemaking.
Violence is taken seriously but kept in perspective. God requires my attention even more than the violence; in attending to him, I see his city taking shape in the catastrophe."
Thank you so much for sharing this.