Every Step an Arrival: A 90-Day Devotional for Exploring God's Word - Tapa dura

Acerca del autor

Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message Bible, authored more than thirty books, including the spiritual classics Run with the Horses and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. He earned a degree in philosophy from Seattle Pacific University, a graduate degree in theology from New York Theological Seminary, and a master’s degree in Semitic languages from John Hopkins University. He also received several honorary doctoral degrees. He was founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, where he and his wife, Jan, served for twenty-nine years. Peterson held the title of professor emeritus of spiritual theology at Regent College, British Columbia from 1998 until his death in 2018.

Fragmento. © Reproducción autorizada. Todos los derechos reservados.

Day 1: The Contrast of Darkness and Light

There is significance in the first day’s creative act: God said, “Light!” And light appeared. The universe is established with God’s light shining through everything. There is a profound understanding of this in the way in which a day is described in Genesis and subsequently in all Jewish life. “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (verse 5, RSV). An odd way to describe a day, but not if you see it as a victory of God’s light. Evening has the sense, in Hebrew, of termination, bringing to a conclusion. A day is described first as the conclusion of the creative work of God, then night, a time of sleep, the incursion of darkness, a threat to the order of creation, a sign of chaos to come. Does night or light have the last word? The answer is in the phrase “and there was morning, one day.”

Morning in Hebrew has the meaning of “penetration.” [1] God’s day is not complete until light shines again, penetrating the darkness and dispersing the shadows. The creative action of God is light, which encloses and limits a temporary darkness. All that we see as a threat to God’s creative action is held in check and controlled by his light. The shadows are there—night descends upon life—and there is that which seems to defy God, to disturb his order and his purpose: sickness, death, trouble, and sorrow. But it does not have the last word: “And there was morning, one day.”

***

Identify an area of your life in which you need God’s light to penetrate the dimness. Will night or light have the last word? Talk with God about the clarity you seek.

[1]. Strong’s Concordance, s.v. “boqer: morning,” http://biblehub.com/hebrew/1242.htm.