A Manual For Living

I love reading the Bible since it enlightens my thinking.....always.
One of my favorite versions is 'The Message' Bible because it is kinda a 'Southern Paraphrase' which
I am very familiar with the wording.
Keep in mind that The Message is a reading Bible.  It is not intended to replaced study Bibles.
You won't find 'thee' or 'thou' or any other such language in the Message Bible.
It uses the same language that we might use to talk to a friend on the phone or write in an e-mail.
It sounds less like Shakespeare and more like.....us.
A lot of people think that the Bible originally came out sounding like something from the Middle Ages, but in reality it was originally written in the language of the streets.
It was the language of fishermen, shopkeepers, and other regular people.
Eugene Peterson  is a longtime pastor and teacher, and he is the guy who translated and paraphrased this Bible, The Message, from Greek and Hebrew (the languages in which  the Bible was originally written.)
Eugene says this, "I began my work life as a teacher and for several years taught the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek in a theological seminary.  I expected to live the rest of my life as a
professor and scholar, teaching and writing and studying. 
But then my life took a sudden turn to pastoring in a congregation.
"I was now plunged into quite a different world.
The first noticeable difference was that nobody seemed to care about the Bible, which so recently people had been paying me to teach them.  Many of the people I worked with now knew virtually nothing about it, had never read it, and weren't interested in learning.
Many others had spent years reading it but it had gone flat through familiarity.
Bored, they dropped it.
Few people were interested in what I considered my primary work, getting the words of the Bible into their heads and hearts, getting the message LIVED.
They found newspapers and magazines, videos and novels more to their taste.
I knew I had my work cut out for me.
I lived in two language worlds, the world of the Bible and the world of Today.
I had always assumed they were the same world.
But these people didn't see it that way.
So out of this 'necessity' I became a 'translator' (although I wouldn't have called it that then),
daily standing on the border between two worlds, getting the language of the Bible that God uses to create and save us, heal and bless us, judge and rule over us, in the language of Today that we use to gossip and tell stories, give directions and do business, sing songs and talk to each other.
"I did that for thirty years in one congregation.
And then one day (it was April 30, 1990) I got a letter from an editor asking me to work on a new version of the Bible along the lines of what I had been doing as a pastor.
I agreed.
The next ten years was harvest time.
The Message Bible is the result."


This is why I read and love the words in The Message Bible....
It speaks, Southernese for sure.....to me.

Proverbs 3:5

The Message (MSG) ^5-6 Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don't try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God's voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
He's the one who will keep you on track.
Don't assume that you know it all.
Run to God! Run from evil!
Your body will glow with health,
your very bones will vibrate with life!