Quotes from Eugene H. Peterson

I called you to live at your best, to pursue righteousness, to sustain a drive toward excellence.

People who are forever breaking the rules, trying other roads, attempting to create their own system of values and truth from scratch, spend most of their time calling up someone to get them out of trouble and help repair the damage, and then ask the silly question "What went wrong?" As H. H. Farmer said, "If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters.

21-23 Oh! Can you believe it? The chaste city has become a whore! She was once all justice, everyone living as good neighbors, And now they're all at one another's throats. Your coins are all counterfeits. Your wine is watered down. Your leaders are turncoats who keep company with crooks. They sell themselves to the highest bidder and grab anything not nailed down. They never stand up for the homeless, never stick up for the defenseless.

Mortals make elaborate plans, but GOD has the last word.

But there is an older wisdom that puts it differently: by changing our behavior we can change our feelings.

The promise of the psalm—and both Hebrews and Christians have always read it this way—is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God's purposes in us.

Youth may be admired for vigor, but gray hair gives prestige to old age.

this book, giving voice to what is so basic among men and women throughout history, I have translated it "the Quester."]

One person says, "I don't feel like worshiping; therefore I am not going to church. I will wait till I feel like it and then I will go." Another says, "I don't feel like worshiping; therefore I will go to church and put myself in the way of worship." In the process she finds herself blessed and begins, in turn, to bless.

proper work for the Christian is witness, not apology, and Psalm 124 is an excellent model.

The theologian who has no joy in his work is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this science.

Because he refused to take himself seriously and decided to take God seriously, Barth burdened neither himself nor those around him with the gloomy, heavy seriousness of ambition or pride or sin or self-righteousness. Instead, the lifting up of hands, the brightness of blessing.

religion is an inconvenience only to those who are traveling against the grain of creation, at cross-purposes with the way that leads to redemption.7

For if a pastor is not in touch with joy, it will be difficult to teach or preach convincingly that the news is good.

The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism is "What is the chief end of man?" What is the final purpose? What is the main thing about us? Where are we going, and what will we do when we get there? The answer is "To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Charis always demands the answer eucharistia (that is, grace always demands the answer of gratitude). Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.

The people of Birmingham also have souls.

That's when the phrase (from Nietzsche) "a long obedience in the same direction" embedded itself in my imagination and eventually became this book.

Theologian Karl Rahner was once asked if he believed in miracles. His reply? 'I live on miracles—I couldn't make it through a day without them.' Still another name for it is mystery.

I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer—helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer.

The Christian life is not about leadership but "followership," not about becoming more and more but less and less.

The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, "deny yourself" congregation.

But we can't believe that he condescends to watch the soap opera of our daily trials and tribulations; so we purchase our own remedies for that.

For sound advice is a beacon, good teaching is a light, moral discipline is a life path.