Eugene Rocks!

Do you find the Bible boring and/or difficult to read? When I found The Message bible, a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson, I thought to myself, "Finally someone did it right!You can find The Message in any bookstore; I found my beige leather bound edition in a Christian store. What I like most is the way Eugene takes the original text and preserves the "gritty"style that it was originally written in yet maintains a fluid polish that doesn't intimidate a new reader or insult an accomplished theologian.

In an article on LifeWay's website, Mr. Peterson comments, "When Paul of Tarsus wrote a letter, the people who received it understood it instantly," Peterson explains. "When the prophet Isaiah preached a sermon, I can't imagine that people went to the library to figure it out. That was the basic premise under which I worked. I began with the New Testament in the Greek --- a rough and jagged language, not so grammatically clean. I just typed out a page the way I thought it would have sounded to the Galatians."

Mr. Peterson, thank you for resurrecting The Message of God's character out of yesteryear's dusty translations and allowing God to use you to breathe new life into the Truth. This bible has changed my life as well as many others in countless ways!