Scouting the Divine by Margaret Feinberg has set me off on a new adventure, thinking about things in new ways.
We start by asking questions. How does the Bible come to live in our hearts? How do we move from being informed by the Bible to being transformed by it? One obstacle in our path is that the lives of the people in the Bible were so different from ours today.
It’s challenging to relate to stories of tax collectors and fishermen, shepherds and farmers, while having no real understanding of what their daily lives were like. Over the last 2000 years so many of the stories they tell have been encrusted with interpretation. It’s even challenging for us to grasp the importance the words they use. What does it mean when we say ‘Christ is the Good Shepherd’ or ‘Lamb of God’, if we have never interacted with an actual sheep? How can we learn to wait for the harvest when, in our experience, food comes from the grocery store?
Scouting the Divine tells the story of Margaret’s search for meaning in everyday experience. She spends time with a sheep and shepherds to understand what that relationship is really like. She explores how farmers depend on a good harvest, and what that means as we try to understand what God tells us. She listens as a beekeeper talks about a land flowing with milk and honey, and as a vintner describes new wine and abiding in the vine.
Margaret’s book takes us along on the adventure, and shares with us the lessons of everyday life. She helps us to see what we may have missed or obscured, through the eyes of people who daily experience what we can only read.
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