Like Rich, Chocolate Cake

I am currently reading Eugene Peterson's book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. This wonderful book is like a rich, chocolate cake. You know the kind? You take a bite, and it is so rich and moist that you have to go slow, eat it slow, savoring every bite.

In the book, Peterson is trying to rescue theology from being a merely intellectual exercise in which people acquire facts and information about God. Instead, theology ought to inform us for life, compelling us to live in a way that reflects God and is worthy of him. He roots all of our lives in the life of the Trinity, which I love. His style is fresh, his insights fascinating, and his point compelling.

The book's title comes from a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Here it is:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; "myself" it speaks and spells,
Crying "What I do is me: for that I came."

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.