I’m almost caught up with chapter 3, but I wanted to share from the first two chapters before the chance got away from me. I echo the comment about the good reminder to read the New Testament with Old Testament ears. And I wonder if these ears need to also be a part of my living as well. I am a 6th grade teacher, and this week a lot of different issues have been coming to the surface in my classroom. I always want to jump ahead and solve problems as fast as I can to prevent any further conflict, but when I listen with Old Testament ears and see with Old Testament eyes, I see a God who had to put up with a lot of crap. His people screwed up, He was faithful, and then they screwed up again. But through it all, there are still echoes of His sovereignty, His wrath, His mercy. So if I remember in my mind and believe in my heart that this sovereign God of the Old Testament is also the sovereign God of my 6th grade classroom, I know that my work is not in vain. In fact, it is not my work at all; it is the work of the sovereign Lord.

It’s interesting to read a book that compares postmodernism and this cybernetic global optimism. Postmodernism is a familiar topic of discussion and reading for me, but this whole cybernetic global thing is perhaps something I have avoided. I’m really glad the authors chose to include it because it does play such an important part in our culture. I am often disgusted by it, but I think the influences are more far-reaching than I like to admit. Someone mentioned something about being overwhelmed by the cereal aisle at the grocery store. (sorry I don’t remember who said it. I don’t have access to the internet now, so I’m going off of memory). My grandma has dementia and lived with us for a few years while I was in college. She basically has no short-term memory, and every time she sees me comments on how much I’ve grown. One day I asked her what she would like to eat for lunch. She said she would like peanut butter, so I got out two jars, one crunchy and one smooth. When asked which one she would like to eat, she stared in awe at the two different kinds of peanut butter and said, “Well. When did that happen?” If choosing between two kinds of peanut butter is a problem for her, I probably shouldn’t take her down the cereal aisle.

More often than not I read the New Testament with a glazed expression. The words are familiar, and I know they are rooted with rich goodness meant to satisfy an insatiable desire for truth, but I still read it with low expectations. I really enjoyed reading the targum that the authors wrote for Colossians 1:1-14, not because I thought it was the most brilliant paraphrase, but because it brought a few things to life for me. The phrase “grace and peace” is used by Paul at the beginning of his letters, by friends at the end of their e-mails, and I think it has become a lifeless phrase for me. But when the phrase is read with the Old Testament ears and you consider Ezekiel and his “covenant of peace”, it changes things. I really liked this quote on page 42. “We see for Ezekiel peace is rooted in grace. There can be such wholeness, such creationwide shalom, only if God enters into our conflict-ridden, distorted, oppressive, and broken reality with initiatives of grace.” I feel that already the Lord is pumping oxygen into His words, and I am once again seeing the life and truth that has been there all along.