The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat. What began as news in the gospel is easily assumed, slotted, and conveniently dismissed. We depart having heard, but without noticing the urge to transformation that is not readily compatible with our comfortable believing that asks little and receives less.
Walter Brueggeman
What Brueggeman has written is quite convicting to say the least. I know the gospel. I have heard it, preached it, studied it, written about it, and even have it memorized. And yet I can easily journey a path in which I am no longer becoming transformed by it.
Now what I am writing about here does not imply needing to have an emotional experience every time one reads the Bible. Instead, I prefer to think of it as a daily and steady walk of having the good news of Jesus change me into becoming more like him. In other words, I don’t treat the gospel as the channel 4 news story in which I watch one minute and forget the next. Rather, I let it marinate in my soul.
So what do you do to stop and listen and read and absorb the life, words, death and resurrection of Jesus? Or maybe a better question is when do you stop to listen and absorb?
Let’s don’t dismiss the gospel. I’m afraid it’s easy to do these days. Or at least it is for me. But what I have found as I do engage with it, that I don’t necessarily know it as well as I think I do. There’s always something new. I guess that’s the depth of love.
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