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

by Eugene H. Peterson

The world changes, fashions change, culture changes, and social structures change. The one thing that doesn’t change is the living God and his way of loving and saving us. The one thing that doesn’t change is the word train in the act of training an infant to live in safe and affectionate intimacy with the source of life in this place where he or she has just been delivered from a nine-month voyage to Liverpool or Baltimore or whatever is stamped on the birth certificate. Every person that knows anything of this from his own experience—and that, by definition, means every Christian—can, by giving witness to his experience and skills, train another, whether by words or example. But it is essentially a living act, an invitation to a certain kind of life, a living that centers responsively on Jesus Christ, who is the same and the only one who is the same “yesterday and today and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).