SPIRITUAL FOCUS ON BOOKS February 16, 2009 Issue

ENGAGING IN GOD'S WORK

KIM SHIPPEY, SENIOR WRITER

THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW Eugene Peterson only for his carefully researched Bible paraphrase The Message might be overlooking some of his finest work. If you haven't leapt over a wall with him to share his David stories,
Leap Over a Wall, HarperSanFrancisco, 1997 or, more recently, let him explain how Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, you've missed much of his unparalleled ability to write engagingly on the most challenging aspects of the Scriptures—to get to the heart of an issue and write in a way that those of us who are not theologians can understand.

His succinctness as a writer perhaps relates to years spent making things clear to students as a college professor in Vancouver, Canada, and to the three decades he spent as a pastor in Bel Air, Maryland. Although he seems to have read almost everything, Peterson never tries to dazzle you with his knowledge. You feel as though you're in the company of a fellow spiritual seeker who has the same questions as you do, and is happy to have you look over his shoulder as he patiently tries to work his way through them.

This search is reflected in the breadth and scope of the recently published Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (named from a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins) and in the mixed personal and academic style in the writing. His goal, he says, is to provide the "widespread but often free-floating spirituality of our time" with structure and coherence by working from a Scriptural foundation. And while Sentinel readers might not agree with every point he makes, they will find his insights tremendously helpful even as they view them through the lens of their own beliefs.

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