I first encountered Walter Brueggemann sometime during my last year of seminary. He quickly became a favorite of mine…in particular, I had never – before or since – read anyone who took the particularities, subtleties, oddities, and nuances of each individual text of Scripture so seriously as the living Word of God to us NOW as professor Brueggemann. To that extent, I found him to be a kindred spirit. The Bible is just SO freaking much more interesting than all of our lame attempts to “say” God.
So when Walter writes prayers about reading the Bible, I listen up…and then pray them too…I hope that your encounters with the text of Scripture rise to the level of the courageous “encountering” that he speaks of:
For the mystery of the text
and for the history of eyes to see
and ears to hear the text
we give you thanks.
Our eyes are scaled
and our ears are uncircumcised
and we are children of another world.
We pray for the gift of perception
We pray for energy and courage
that we may not leave the text
until we wrench your blessing from it.
Amen.
(From “Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann“)
