I have a bit of an odd interest in things that are together, but don’t go together. If that makes sense. A small storm cloud surrounded by blue sky. A run-down house in a nice neighborhood. An Iowa fan in the middle of the Husker student section. 

Weird and out of place things like that are, for whatever reason, really interesting to me. 

Once upon a time in Montana there was a meek, soft-spoken, 83-year-old man named Eugene Peterson. He was famous for writing a book that is a super-famous re-telling of the whole Bible, called The Message. Somewhere else in the world right now there is a 60-year-old Irishman named Paul. And he is basically the opposite of Eugene Peterson. He is loud, flashy, and a rock star. For decades, the world has known him as Bono, the lead singer of the band U2. 

But as it turns out, Bono the rock star and Eugene Peterson the scholar were friends. Bono started trying to contact Eugene Peterson years ago after he started to read The Message, and they remained friends for the remainder of Eugene Peterson’s life.

A few years ago, Bono came to Montana to spend a day with the Petersons at their lake house. A camera crew came, filmed the whole thing, and made a short documentary about it.

Eugene Peterson is standing at his front door in a blue button-up shirt and khaki pants, with an olive green coffee maker percolating in the kitchen. And here comes Bono in tinted glasses and tinted hair and two mismatched gold earrings looking like he just got off stage from a fashion show for aging rock stars. 

When these two guys come into the picture together, it's like watching a middle-aged peacock meet an old turtle. Like seeing a hipster in a brand new BMW and an old truck driver getting snowed in at the same little gas station. Like two different worlds colliding. 

And yet there is this undertone of connection between them that is spectacular.

Very quickly you see that they have two things in common that bridge all the divides between them. The first is that they are both passionate and vocal Christians. The second is that they are both artists. At heart they are both artists who want to know and proclaim and live out the greatness of God in life, even though they do it in totally different ways. 

As I think about them and me and us, I am reminded of a couple of things. 

For the most part, we are not artists. Or at least we don’t think of ourselves that way. We tend to pride ourselves on being straight-forward people who live our lives as best we can with what we’ve got to work with. And there is something valuable and important in that view of ourselves that we should celebrate. 

But very often as we go about this work of trying to plainly live our lives, we get lost. 

We fail to see ourselves for what we are, life for what it is, and ultimately God for who He is. And that is where guys like Bono and Eugene Peterson can become tremendously helpful for us. 

We live in the midst of an indescribable happening. Yet it is so common to us that we usually don’t even see it. 

Right now in this moment, as we are driving and working and sitting and shopping, both the greatest tragedy in history and the greatest rescue in history are unfolding simultaneously. In the tragedy, life is spiraling out of control. We are sick, sad, hateful, hurtful, and hopeless. Yet even in the midst of the worst of all of that, God is working to call us to Him and to make all things new.

So often as we seek to live plainly, we live blindly—unaware of the tragedy that is destroying us and the God who is working to save us.

Let's be artists for a while. May we open our eyes to see and search together for this God who saves.