Show Notes
In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland reflects on one of the most beloved phrases from The Message by Eugene Peterson: “Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”
Derek shares how Eugene Peterson, whom he affectionately calls “Eugene the Wise,” has profoundly shaped his identity as both pastor and writer. Drawing from Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer and The Message translation of Matthew 11:28–30, Derek explores how Eugene captured not only the meaning of Jesus’ words but their texture—their emotional and spiritual feel.
Through stories from his own life including running track in high school, finding rhythm on the dance floor, and learning to live less from his head and more from his heart, Derek unpacks what it means to live in sync with the grace of God.
This episode invites listeners to slow down, notice the presence of God in the ordinary, and rediscover the gentle, freeing pace of life with Jesus. Grace, like rhythm, cannot be forced. It must be felt, received, and lived.
Key Takeaways
Grace has a rhythm that can’t be forced; it must be received.
The “unforced rhythms of grace” describe life lived in sync with Jesus, free, light, and unhurried.
Faith isn’t a performance of religion but an invitation to relationship.
The spiritual life is less about control and more about alignment, moving at the pace of Jesus.
The incarnation means grace is already near, woven into the grit and glory of ordinary life.
Questions for Reflection
Are you aware of God’s presence with you?
Have you been burned out by religion or striving?
What would it look like to walk freely and lightly with Jesus this week?
Scriptures mentioned in this episode: Matthew 11:28–30 (The Message) John 1:14
Books mentioned in this episode:Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer by Eugene Peterson Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us by Derek Vreeland
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Transcript
Welcome back.
To another episode of Peaceable and Kind.
I am your host, Derek Vreeland.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode.
Before we get started, if you would leave a rating and review, I’d appreciate that.
That is one of the ways that you can help grow this podcast.
And if you are new to Peaceable and Kind, welcome.
I think you are in for a great episode today.
And if you are new, go ahead and subscribe to Peaceful and Kind wherever you are listening to this podcast episode.
We’re going to get into it today, and I’m going to start by talking a little bit about one of my heroes.
And that is Eugene Peterson.
Eugene Peterson was a pastor for a number of years in the Baltimore area.
when he stepped out of pastoral ministry, he was teaching at Regent University in Vancouver.
I have a pastor friend that was at Regent when Eugene was teaching and uh had him.
for a professor.
And so in talking to my friend, I was able to get a little bit of a of an inside peek uh to the life of Eugene Peterson.
He passed away a few years ago, but leaves behind
a number of very, very helpful books.
Of course, his translation of the Bible, the message.
has been important in my life as a pastor and a writer.
And I can’t think of anyone out there who has shaped my identity
as both a pastor and a writer more than Eugene Peterson.
I really see myself as cut from the Eugene Peterson cloth.
He wrote a number of his books.
I don’t know how many.
I would actually have to go back and look, but I would guess the majority of the books that he wrote, he wrote while a pastor.
And I am doing the same thing.
Much like Eugene, I love the scriptures and feel called as a pastor and a teacher.
And so my teaching as a pastor is not just what I do on Sunday mornings at my church if I’m preaching that Sunday morning.
It’s not just the teaching that I do throughout the week at our church.
It’s not only this podcast, which is for me an extension of my
my teaching and working out my thoughts as a pastor, but also in my writing.
I feel called to write.
This was early on in my 30s as a pastor, as I was trying to figure things out.
I really sensed God calling me as a pastor.
to write and to teach and to be a voice.
And so here I am on this podcast episode.
uh trying to be faithful to that calling, but I also have been writing as a part of my pastoral vocation, much like Eugene Peterson.
And this fall, our leadership team has been reading a Eugene Peterson book together.
We’ve been reading Eugene’s book on the Psalms: Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer.
And this is not a Eugene Peterson book that I had read before.
And so I am thoroughly enjoying it.
This is one of the books written while Eugene was a pastor.
It came out.
in nineteen eighty-nine.
He actually wrote the book.
It’s a very, very short book, but he wrote it while he was taking a sabbatical break, so while he was back
in Montana, his home state.
He was writing this book.
You know, he was a pastor in the in the Baltimore area, in more of a suburban area, but he’s from Montana.
Those are his roots.
Eugene in one of his books says that all theology is rooted in geography.
In other words, there is a context to which our beliefs and thoughts about God grow
And so Eugene has been a lover of the Psalms all throughout his spiritual life and through his pastoral ministry.
So
It’s been exciting for our team, our leadership team, to read this book together, to talk a little bit
about the role of the Psalms.
And when we got started, the very opening line from the very first chapter of Answering God.
Was one of those lines from Eugene that really stuck with me.
And this is how he opens chapter one of Answering God.
Eugene Peterson writes: A text has texture.
Words woven into a fabric of meaning have a characteristic feel to them
Now this is just the very opening of this book, and when I read that line, it was one of those lines that caused me just to pause for a minute.
to reflect, to think about what is he trying to communicate here?
A text has a texture
Words woven into a fabric of meaning have a characteristic feel to them.
Wow, what a statement.
That
That was a line that not only did I work through in my mind and my heart, but this is one of the reasons why I love Eugene.
He loves the Bible.
And so when he’s talking about a text, his primary text for preaching, for teaching, for writing was the Holy Scriptures.
Eugene loved biblical languages, Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek, and he understood that words that form a text.
are not just symbols that point to some kind of object or concept in an intellectual sense
But words also carry a certain emotional texture to them
So when we’re doing Bible study, and this is one of the things I learned from Eugene Peterson, it is not enough to ask what do these words mean, but how do these words feel?
And what do they feel and mean in the world of the original listeners?
Part of the difficulty of really good Bible study
is working to understand what the scriptures meant in their historical context before working towards what they mean for us today.
Now, both are important.
Both ancient historical context and modern theological application are necessary.
But what I’ve learned from Eugene is that we start by honoring our sacred text, that is the Bible, by reading it in its historical context first.
Wanting to understand how they felt in that world, the world of the original hearers.
How did these words fall upon them?
Not just their minds and their understanding, but their hearts
How were they moved by the words of Scripture?
So we start there with the historical context, and then we work to communicate that to a modern audience.
And Eugene Peterson has done that so well in the message, his modern translation of the Bible, and he doesn’t do it perfectly.
I mean, I love the message Bible, wrote my Bible study series using the message, but it’s not a perfect translation because Shocker.
Spoiler alert, there is no perfect translation.
I agree with my friend Tim Wildsmith that in Bible study we need a whole team of translations.
to help us as we’re working through the text.
And so the message is not perfect.
There are times in reading through the message that I think Eugene misses both the texture
the sort of emotional content and the meaning of the text.
But I do appreciate his work.
I appreciate Eugene in his attempt
to pull out of the scriptures not just intellectual content, but feeling.
And I think that’s important.
Now, one of the most famous verses in the message has got to be Matthew 11, 28 through 30.
As I worked through the message over a two-year period, I was making notations in my copy of the message for phrases that I thought captured not only meaning but texture.
Um, because there are a ton of those lines throughout the message.
However, when people think of the message translation,
I think Matthew 11, 28 through 30, this is one of the biggies.
This is one of the most memorable.
Sections in the message.
So let me read it.
Matthew 11, 28 through 30.
This is Jesus speaking, and this is in the message translation.
So Jesus here is asking questions.
Are you tired?
Worn out?
Burned out on religion
Come to me.
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.
I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me.
Watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you
Keep company with me, and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.
Now, if that wasn’t a translation from Scripture
I would call that really good poetry from Eugene Peterson.
Speaking those words aloud, you can hear the rhythm, the cadence, there’s alliteration in there.
But also there is that famous line, the unforced rhythms of grace.
I mean, next to John 1.
14, the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood
This line from Matthew 11, 28 through 30, the unforced rhythms of grace, is one of the great jewels of the message.
Now, is this literally the meaning of what Jesus said?
No.
I mean, if you’re looking at the Greek text
and you’re trying to translate those Greek words in more of a literal way.
That’s not what Jesus said
But does that phrase, the unforced rhythms of grace, does it get at the texture?
The emotional content of what Jesus is saying, I would say absolutely
So we want to dive a little bit deeper into that line and that concept.
And it really does come across poetic, the unforced rhythms of grace.
It is a bit of poetry, and poetry hits us different than prose.
Poetry not only causes us to think, but we’re we’re moved by those words emotionally.
And so I see
This entire section, Matthew 11, 28 through 30 in the message, as not only good poetry, but it’s also a kind of invitation
Jesus here is inviting us into a different way of being human
And I explore this line in lesson eight of my Bible study incarnation, but I want to do on this podcast episode what I always try to do.
And that is to bring out what Jesus is saying and thinking and see how that shape not only what we believe, but how we live.
Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11 is not something to study as much as it is something to feel and then to live into.
So let me start with this, as we reflect on unforced rhythms of grace.
If I am making an honest confession today, I would admit to you that I am not the most coordinated person.
I loved sports growing up, still love sports, but growing up, as much as I wanted to be an athlete, I completely lack
Hand-eye coordination and athletic agility.
I am 6’2.
I’ve been 6’2 since I was a sophomore in high school.
I wear size 14 shoes.
I was thinking I was wearing a size 13 in middle school.
And I was built for straight line speed.
And found myself not necessarily excelling at anything that had a ball involved
basketball, football, baseball.
I played baseball, I think I was in the fifth grade one year because my friends wanted me to go out for the team.
And I think in that season I had one hit
Now I swung a lot, but I only made contact with the ball one time.
And it wasn’t because I was closing my eyes.
You know, I early on knew you see the ball hit the ball, you watch the bat make contact with the ball
I just lacked anti quartation.
Honestly, I tried to walk as often as I could and not swing because I knew if I got on base
Like I could steal bases.
I was always fast.
But one time I made contact with the baseball, and I think I was the most surprised person on the field.
When I made contact, there was a moment like, I just hit the ball.
What do I do?
Oh yeah, run.
And I’d take off.
So in high school, uh I started in high school uh loving basketball and and wanting to be
a basketball player and I want to excel at that.
So I started running track as a way to stay in shape for basketball.
But by my sophomore and definitely by my junior year, I realized that I was going to be much
better in track and field than basketball.
And being taller made it somewhat easier
Hurdling, because that was my sport.
I ran the 110 high hurdles, I ran the 300 intermediate hurdles, and I had a great coach, Coach Reynolds.
Who taught me that hurdling is as much an art as it is a science?
Because you don’t jump over hurdles, you glide over the hurdle
Hurdling is an extension of your stride.
And in the 110 high hurdles, there are 10 hurdles that you must glide over on the way to the finish line.
And you quickly realize that the only way to be proficient is to take three steps in between the hurdles.
And being a little bit taller, I was just really built for it.
And so your approach to the first hurdle, that was somewhere from eight to ten steps, but then you’re three-stepping in between each hurdle.
And so there is some rhythm to it.
A part of learning how to hurdle is not only speed and conditioning, flexibility and technique
But it’s about falling into the rhythm, finding a flow that made each movement part of a larger pattern.
Because these state qualifiers and by the way, I never made it to state.
My senior year
I didn’t even make it out of districts.
It was a disappointing end to my hurdling career.
My junior year, I was in sectionals.
Which is one step before state, and they take the top two hurdlers, and I was third into the final heat, but I false started
So I had the best opportunity to make it to state my junior year, but I false started.
And I really considered, even after a poor senior year, I really considered possibly running track in college.
I after my junior year, I was receiving invitations from D2 and D3 schools to run track, and I considered it, but ultimately it wasn’t what God was calling me to do.
I gotta jump into this podcast episode to let you know I have a new book that’s out.
Incarnation.
Eight lessons on how God meets us is available now.
Go order it.
Link is in the show notes.
And so years later, in reflecting back to my high school days as a hurdler, I realized this was one of my very first lessons in grace.
even though at that time I didn’t understand it.
Now back then in high school, because I was uncoordinated, I looked like a baby giraffe often, just trying to walk.
Uh so uncoordinated, gangly, big ol’ feet.
Rhythm didn’t come easy to me, and so I avoided all the school dances.
Like I had friends that wanted to do that, but I I didn’t want to go to any school dances.
I didn’t want to get out on the dance floor and make a fool of myself when it seemed like everyone else knew what to do.
So I just stayed home.
And beyond that, I’m really an introvert, so I’d rather be uh home reading a good book or watching something on TV than being with a bunch of people anyway.
So I avoided school dances in high school.
Then college came.
Now my freshman year I went off to college and while we were there early, we had a freshman orientation week before
the fall semester began.
Uh had a roommate who invited me to go to one of the freshman dances as a part of freshman orientation week.
And I I didn’t really want to go.
I was like, ah, this is not this is not for me.
But I went anyway.
And that night out on the dance floor in that gymnasium, something happened to me.
I stopped overthinking what I was supposed to do on the dance floor.
I stopped worrying about how I looked.
And for the first time, I just gave into the music.
I felt the music.
And all of a sudden, my feet begin to move almost on their own
And it was like God gave me just for that night the spiritual gift of rhythm.
Now, do you remember the 1979 movie The Jerk with Steve Martin?
Man, that was a long time ago.
I think nineteen seventy-nine, that was something like forty-five, forty-six years ago.
But in the movie, Stephen Martin plays Navin Johnson, and he is a white kid being raised by a black family in Mississippi, and he lacks rhythm.
He can’t get on the one and three beat, and so while his family is singing and dancing on the front porch, he’s just left out
And so one night he’s laying in bed listening to the radio and all of a sudden his toes begin to tap.
He
begins to feel rhythm for the first time.
And it’s because of songs being played and the beats on the two and four, but still
He finds rhythm and he gets up and he wakes up his whole family and and he’s so excited that he can snap to the beat that he can dance.
It’s a funny movie, but
That’s what happened to me in college.
I found rhythm.
I was given this gift of rhythm.
And I received it not by thinking, but by feeling
Which is really a lot like receiving the grace of God.
Because grace, just like rhythm, it can’t be overthought and it can’t be forced.
You can’t analyze your way into the grace of God.
The grace of God is something we receive as a gift.
We receive it as a gift into our hearts and we have to feel it.
We just receive it and move with it.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized something about myself.
I I tend to live too much of my time in my head.
I overthink things, I overplan, I over-analyze.
I try to work through problems intellectually instead of just feeling my way through grace.
I hope today I’m a little bit more integrated with my heart in my head, but I realize my tendency to just overthink things.
When it comes to the grace of God, I recognize that grace is not a math problem to solve, it’s a rhythm to step into.
Jesus invites us to walk with him, to work with him, to watch how he does it.
That’s how he does life.
And that’s not just learning Bible verses or learning new theological facts, although that’s important too
It’s about learning a new way of being human, a new way of living the human life
The unforced rhythms of grace are the patterns of life we learn when we keep company with Jesus
They’re not frantic, they’re not manipulative, they’re not striving for control.
They are unforced, free, and light.
So let’s go back to Matthew 11 in the message translation.
Jesus has just finished commissioning his disciples, sending them out to proclaim good news and to heal the sick.
Then he begins to speak about the weariness of religion.
Jesus here in the message translation
Begins to talk about the exhaustion of just trying to hold it all together.
And so in the message translation, Jesus is asking, are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion?
And those questions seem timely for us in this age of hurry and outrage and stress and exhaustion.
Because so many of us are burned out, not by the Christian faith, but by the performance of faith.
I tend to view religion as a very positive thing, or at least religion is morally neutral
But bad religion is bad.
Hypocritical religion is bad.
There is a form of Christianity that only focuses on doing.
that is the externals.
And so there is a form of the Christian faith where people focus on performance.
What does this look like?
What are the optics?
And people get burned out on that religion.
Fear-based, shame-based, rule-based religion that is simply focused on doing with no inner being transformation.
That’s exhausting.
And so Jesus says, are you burned out on these things?
Come to me, get away with me, and you’ll recover your life.
We’ve been told that to be a good Christian is to do more, try harder, serve longer, read faster, pray better.
And somewhere along the way, we lose sight of this gentle invitation of Jesus.
Come to me, walk with me, learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
Now, in most translations, walk with me and work with me, watch how I do it, is translated, take my yoke upon you
Now that sounds a lot like work, but really this take my yoke upon you is about partnership
In the first century world, a yoke was a wooden beam used to join together two oxen so they could pull a plow in sink.
To take Jesus’ yoke means to walk in step with him, to learn his pace, his stride, his unhurried rhythm
Jesus doesn’t yank us forward.
He doesn’t drag us behind.
He walks with us.
And maybe the first thing he teaches us is to stop trying so hard.
The spiritual life
is not a matter of willpower, but an opening to the Spirit’s power.
As we yoke up our life with Jesus and we simply walk with Him
Jesus came to us.
This is the incarnation.
God coming to us in the person of Jesus, moving into the neighborhood
The entire incarnation is about God with us.
Not God running ahead of us or God falling behind, not God dragging us into the future or pulling us back into the past.
But God with us.
But just because God is present doesn’t mean we always perceive it
Our world moves so fast that our attention is fragmented, and we’ve just trampled on the soil of the soul where awareness grows.
That’s why walking with Jesus isn’t just about rest for our souls, it’s also about becoming present again, present to the God who is with us
So when we come to Jesus, when we walk with him and work with him, watching how he does life.
We begin to notice that Jesus walks with a certain pace.
It’s a a patient pace.
And when we slow down enough to walk and work and watch Jesus, we become aware not only of God’s presence in our life, but the presence of other people.
We begin to see other people in our life who are hurting or suffering.
We also begin to notice the beauty in small things.
We begin to recognize blessings that sometimes go unrecognized.
And ultimately we notice that in this life we’re we’re not alone.
Not only is God with us, but God has put people in our lives, people around us.
So we acknowledge that God is here and that grace is flowing
And all we need to do is to fall into its rhythm.
One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that grace has a beat.
And it’s not always loud or obvious.
Sometimes it sounds like the quiet repetition of ordinary days.
It’s the rhythm of
Breathing in the presence of God and breathing out words of prayer.
It’s the rhythm of giving and receiving love.
It’s the rhythm of showing up for family members or co-workers.
It’s the weekly rhythm of Sabbath rest.
It’s the rhythm of forgiveness, of letting go of anger and resentment, and choosing kindness over control.
And you can’t manufacture those rhythms.
You can only join them
So as we wrap up this podcast episode, let’s slow down for just a moment.
Let me ask you a few questions.
And as you reflect on these questions, maybe you can tap into that unforced rhythm of grace.
So let me first ask, are you aware of God’s presence with you?
Now you know I’m with you because I’m in your ears here on this podcast, but whatever you’re doing in this moment.
Are you aware that God is with you?
God’s presence is with you.
The incarnation, God moving into the neighborhood is a great promise that God will always be with you.
Secondly, what are some ways you’ve experienced the presence of God?
Or maybe what are some experiences you’ve had recently where you were completely detached and unaware of the presence of God?
Third question I want you to reflect on is, have you been burned out by religion?
By church?
By the spiritual disciplines?
And what led to that burnout?
What can you do to walk with Jesus?
Work with Jesus?
Watch how Jesus does it and receive healing from that kind of burnout
Finally, what would it look like to live freely and lightly alongside Jesus this week?
Maybe make that your goal.
What would it look like to live freely and lightly?
And obviously you cannot always control your schedule.
Right?
If you’re working, you have a work schedule.
If you have family, you have a family schedule.
But what could you do?
What is in your control to live freely and lightly?
Maybe it would look like taking a walk.
without your phone.
Maybe it would look like sitting quietly and praying without words.
Maybe it would look like
Releasing something you’ve been trying to control.
Whatever it is, please know that grace won’t force its way into your life.
But
If you slow down, stop striving, I believe you will fall into the beat to the rhythm
of the grace of God.
Well I hope this episode has been encouraging to you.
Thank you for joining me.
Go in peace.
And be kind
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.