Dog-with-a-Bone Kind of Reading

"Language, spoken and written, is the primary means for getting us in on what is, on what God is and is doing. But it is language of a certain stripe, not words external to our lives, the sort used in grocery lists, computer manuals, French grammars, and basketball rulebooks. These are words intended, whether confrontationally or obliquely, to get inside us, to deal with our souls, to form a life that is congruent with the world that God has created, the salvation that he has enacted, and the community that he has gathered. Such writing anticipates and counts on a certain kind of reading, a dog-with-a-bone kind of reading [Peterson equates this with Hebrew word hagah, that is, "meditate", cf., Ps. 1, Ps. 63, Isa. 31:4.]" (Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, 3-4).