Leonard Sweet was gracious enough to offer these words on Scouting the Divine:
Sometimes I microblog a book. In future, I’ll periodically blog one. My first: Scouting the Divine by Margaret Feinberg.
Margaret Feinberg and Donald Miller are two of the best Christian writers plying their craft today. Both blur boundaries between the observed and the observer, an ethnographic technique known as “participant observation.” Neither writes about anything they haven’t experienced themselves.
Scouting the Divine is Feinberg’s most upfront “up close and personal” book to date. Tilting the axis away from taking Jesus into the world and toward joining Jesus in what he is already doing, Feinberg tracks the Spirit at work in each one of the senses by getting “up close and personal” with a shepherd, farmer, beekeeper, and vintner. She enters into relationships with people who are “all passionate about what they did” and for whom their profession is “not a duty, [but] an act of delight.”
As I was reading this beautiful and gentle book, I thought of how close Feinberg’s “scouting” metaphor was to Jesus’ use of a treasure hunt as a metaphor for his kingdom. “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field … Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who is a merchant seeking fine pearls …” (Matthew 13:44-46). Feinberg shows us how we all can tramp across fields many times without dreaming of the hidden treasures buried in those fields or without scheming to find evidences of the kingdom scattered in fields like literature, art, food, wine, creation. But the pearl of great price or the supreme treasure requires our sacrifice and our alertness.
In the past, slaves of Brazil and Africa who worked in the mines were given their freedom if they found a diamond of a certain value. Those who did find these supreme treasures would come bounding home shouting “I’m free . . I’m free.”
If you find the treasures of Jesus’ kingdom, you can’t help but shout “I’m free,” “I’m free.” I challenge you to finish this diamond of a daybook without shouting many times, “I’m free, I’m free.” Or in Margaret’s reverberating words, the more you scout the divine, the more you can relax and be free because “in a world where everything appears to be broken, God is still in love with his creation.”
As Jane said to Tarzan, “Hang on the VINE.”
