Cultivation of Unhurried Intimacies

Thinking About ... post from The Wellspring

I want to tear down the fences that we have erected between language that deals with God and language that deals with the people around us. It is, after all, the same language. The same God we address in prayer and proclaim in sermons is also deeply, eternally involved in the men and women we engage in conversation, whether casually or intentionally. But not always obviously. God's words are not always prefaced by "Thus says the Lord." It takes time and attentiveness to make connections between the said and the unsaid, the direct and the indirect, the straightforward and the oblique. There are many occasions when the imperious or blunt approach honors neither our God nor our neighbor. Unlike raw facts, truth, especially personal truth, requires the cultivation of unhurried intimacies...God does not compartmentalize our lives into religious and secular. Why do we? --Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers