A Burning in My BonesSmakprov

God Writes the Story

In 1999, I was a young, disillusioned pastor of a struggling church, in way over my head, struggling with failure. One Sunday, a church elder handed me a copy of Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity. “I think you’ll appreciate this,” he said. I realize now that what he really meant was: “I think you need this.”

He was right. 

That afternoon, I began reading and after only 2 or 3 pages, my heart was enflamed. Eugene put words to my deepest questions, unearthed my profound ache, long submerged, for a life that was true.

Several years later, I tracked down Eugene’s address in Montana, and we began writing letters. Eventually, I had breakfast with Eugene in Juneau, Alaska, of all places. We sat in the blue-upholstered booths of the Travelodge diner, as I mercilessly peppered him with question after question. He ate huevos rancheros and bacon, smiling and listening. And then, over the years, more of my letters. More questions.

In 2016, I visited Eugene and Jan at their home on Flathead Lake, assuming this was the last time I’d see them. Energy diminishing, he was pulling his circle close. Flying home, I thought about how someone would tell his story. I hoped someone would offer us Eugene from the inside, narrating more than biographical facts but rather helping us to enter Eugene’s world. I hoped someone would help us to somehow experience what it was like to sit there with Eugene, with the light shimmering off the Flathead, engulfed by a holy silence, immersed in grace. 

To my great shock, within months, I was handed this task. If there is anything Eugene taught me, it’s this: everything is grace. God initiates. God sustains. God starts the story and finishes it. Our job is simply to pay attention, to receive, to respond. Receiving that first book, years of correspondence, breakfast in Juneau, finding myself knee-deep in Eugene’s letters and journals—none of this was mapped out, none of it a straight line. It was, as Eugene liked to say (quoting the poet Denise Levertov), “intently haphazard.” All grace.

This is true for Eugene’s life. And mine. Grace has led me places I’d never envisioned—some astounding (like writing this biography) and some heartbreakingly difficult. But all of it—every story—arrives as pure mercy. God leads the way. God writes the story.