Eugene Peterson

This Sunday at Trinity is World Missions Sunday. Dr. Paul Chinchen will preach from Jeremiah 1 on “We’ve a Story to Tell.”

Eugene Peterson offers some wise counsel in his book on Jeremiah.

He writes:

Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.’ This turns everything we have ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God.

But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God has been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject is God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know.
The realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops. If we use our ego as the center from which to plot the geometry of our lives, we will live eccentrically.

– Run with the Horses, pp.37-38.