Blessed Charity!

Eugene Peterson tells a wonderful story about "a plump, bold, cute, and highly verbal five-year-old" friend of his named Charity and her two grandmothers, both devoted Christians, who recently paid consecutive visits to her home in the Midwest.

The first grandmother, a devout Christian who took her spiritual grandmothering duties very seriously, evidently offered little Charity a lot of spiritual advice over an extended visit. The first morning after her other grandmother arrived, Charity crawled into bed with her at five a.m., cuddled up, and said, "Grandmother, let's not have any godtalk while you are here, okay? I believe God is everywhere. Let's just get on with life."

Knowing Charity personally, having been in her home, Peterson was sure the five-year-old's plea was not to dismiss God out of hand. It was only, believing he is everywhere, to subvert too much talk about him and "just get on with life," which at that point for her meant getting on with her grandmother, also a devout Christian.

Telling that story at the conclusion of an Ex Auditu conference on spiritual formation at North Park Theological Seminary in 2002, Peterson's parting word to theologians and pastors gathered from around the world was this: all they had been discussing from various points of view and disciplines cannot be done in a hurry, forced into a schedule, accomplished by spiritual sound bites, i.e. godtalk. It requires the recovery of classic Christian contemplative traditions that have languished far too long among evangelicals, of listening together and waiting before God in the midst of life, attending and adoring more than speaking and advising.

Charity was right, Peterson avers. "Our great evangelical heritage is becoming more superficial by the decade, shallow and trivialized, noisy and glitzy with godtalk." People are hungering for something deeper, more substantive, more lasting from us. It's God they need, not our godtalk.

"All through the church and culture," Peterson concludes, "there are prepared and listening ears for every word we write, every lecture we give, every sermon we deliver, ready to ... join us as we walk, loiter, stroll, wander, and meander in the Spirit and with Jesus in the land of the living."

Ouch, and Amen!