Every Step an Arrival: A 90-Day Devotional for Exploring God's Word [Hardcover]

Take ninety days and walk through the pages of the Bible with a definitive voice in Christian spirituality. Eugene Peterson provided brief commentary and challenging thoughts designed to stir the biblical imagination and encourage even the weary believer.Eugene H. Peterson, translator ofThe MessageBible, authored more than thirty books, including the spiritual classicsRun with the HorsesandA Long Obedience in the Same Direction. He earned a degree in philosophy from Seattle Pacific University, a graduate degree in theology from New York Theological Seminary, and a master’s degree in Semitic languages from John Hopkins University. He also received several honorary doctoral degrees. He was founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, where he and his wife, Jan, served for twenty-nine years. Peterson held the title of professor emeritus of spiritual theology at Regent College, British Columbia from 1998 until his death in 2018.

Day 1: The Contrast of Darkness and Light

There is significance in the first day’s creative act: God said, “Light!” And light appeared. The universe is established with God’s light shining through everything. There is a profound understanding of this in the way in which a day is described in Genesis and subsequently in all Jewish life. “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (verse 5, RSV). An odd way to describe a day, but not if you see it as a victory of God’s light. Evening has the sense, in Hebrew, of termination, bringing to a conclusion. A day is described first as the conclusion of the creative work of God, then night, a time of sleep, the incursion of darkness, a threat to the order of creation, a sign of chaos to come. Does night or light have the last word? The answer is in the phrase “and there was morning, one day.”

Morning in Hebrew has the meaning of “penetration.” [1] GodlĂ*