Song of Solomon in The Message

In my daily Bible reading I am using The Message by Eugene Peterson.

What a treat the Song of Solomon is in this version! I so enjoyed reading Peterson's paraphrase and it made me think about the Song of Solomon from entirely different perspectives.

I have to say that The Message version is even more sensual than I remembered.

I am now reading in the Proverbs and find my reading to be equally happy and beneficial. What a treasure is the Proverbs. I haven't read there in a while.

At the same time though I have this friend that sends me anti-Christian stuff all the time. She knows I am a believer. I am not sure why she sends it. I've known her a long time and she is not a cruel person. In fact she's a nice person.

I think she must think the stuff is just funny and is unable to understand that the material might hurt my feelings.

I thought about asking her to remove my name from her list or maybe even complaining about what she sends me.

But I decided that we've been friends too long. Besides I think she'd never understand since she isn't a believer herself.

I think my friend is not particularly anti-Christian. Mainly I think she thinks that Christians are conservative and she's liberal. I think she is more non-religious than anything else and more understands the world in political terms.

Now the stuff she sends comes from people who are anti-Christian in particular and anti-religion in general. Generally the material makes fun of Christians and Christian belief. As I understand it I think these people would be quite happy if Christians disappeared.

I think they would not really want to kill Christians but I think it wouldn't hurt their feelings if someone else did. More than anything else I think they want to discourage people from being Christian or at least openly admitting it. They think they are doing a good thing of course.

So I can kind of understand a bit that they would produce and disseminate content that is hurtful to Christians. But why my friend would do it I really don't much understand.

I wonder if the world would be a lot different if there were no Christians?

Or maybe I didn't say anything to my friend because I lost my temper the other day.

I shouldn't have but I did. I still feel badly about it. There had been about 20 preceding incidents where I could have lost my temper and I didn't.

Funny how you can do well 20 times and then the 21st time gets you.