As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God

by Eugene H. Peterson

But—now listen to me carefully—Jesus, by healing the blind and deaf and dumb and lame, makes sure we do not misinterpret Isaiah 35 by spiritualizing it, making poetic figures of it, symbolizing defects in our character. But Jesus also, by not healing all the blind and deaf and dumb and lame, makes sure we will not misinterpret Isaiah 35 by secularizing it, short-cutting God’s purposes by trying to fix in our own strength all that ails the world and us. The wholeness will be the wholeness of the entire new creation brought to a redeemed finish. Every hour of every day we live is a word or sentence or paragraph of the story that will finally come to these conclusions. Which is why we sing, as we sang in last Sunday’s worship, “Praise with elation, praise every morning, God’s re-creation of the new day!”*1 And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way;… And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (verses 8, 10)