Eugene H. Peterson, one of the most influential Christian scholars and authors of the past 30 years, passed away earlier this week. Probably best known for The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, he wrote over 30 books, many of which dealt with practical pastoral themes and issues. In Run with the Horses, one of his earliest works, Peterson wrote about watching a family of birds teach its chicks to fly. Three young swallows were perched on a dead branch that stretched out over a lake. One of the adult swallows gradually pushed the young ones off the branch, forcing them to use their wings. This process worked for the first two chicks, but the third one put up quite a fight. Peterson describes the struggle as follows:
At the last possible moment his grip on the branch loosened just enough so that he swung downward, then tightened again, bulldog tenacious. The parent was without sentiment. He pecked at the desperately clinging talons until it was more painful for the poor chick to hang on than risk the insecurities of flying. The grip was released, and the inexperienced wings began pumping. The mature swallow knew what the chick did not – that it would fly – that there was no danger in making it do what it was perfectly designed to do… Birds have feet and can walk. Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely. They can walk; they can cling. But flying is their characteristic action, and not until they fly are they living at their best, gracefully and beautifully.
Giving is what we do best. It is the air into which we were born. It is the action that was designed into us before our birth…Some of us try desperately to hold on to ourselves, to live for ourselves. We look so bedraggled and pathetic doing it, hanging on to the dead branch of our security blankets for dear life, afraid to risk ourselves on the untried wings of giving. We don’t think we can lives generously because we have never tried. But the sooner we start, the better, for we are going to have to give up our lives finally, and the longer we wait, the less time we have for the soaring and swooping life of grace.
II Corinthians 9.6-7 reminds us that “whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will reap generously…God loves a cheerful giver.” A mark of a Christian disciple is a life of giving: giving of time, giving of talents/gifts, giving of financial blessings…giving by being a channel and vessel of God’s grace in every sphere of our lives. Giving glorifies God, since it witnesses to our trust in His sufficiency rather than in our reliance on our own resources. Giving also continues the ministry of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who was the greatest Gift ever given…an all-sufficient Savior and a never-failing Lord. Giving is not about what we have or do not have; giving is about who God is and what God has done in and through Christ; it is fundamentally about grace. So, it’s little wonder that Eugene Peterson identified giving as the crucial ingredient in “the soaring and swooping life of grace.” What a great description of the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ…and a great description of the life of Eugene Peterson.
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