Quotes from Eugene H. Peterson

It is this fusion of God speaking to us (Scripture) and our speaking to him (prayer) that the Holy Spirit uses to form the life of Christ in us.

What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for? "If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I'm leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you'll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.

Psalm 120 is the psalm of repentance—the one that gets us out of an environment of deceit and hostility and sets us on our way to God. Psalm 121 is the psalm of trust—a demonstration of how faith resists patent-medicine remedies to trials and tribulations and determinedly trusts God to work out his will and "guard you from every evil" in the midst of difficulty

Love is intricate, demanding, glorious, deeply human, and God-honoring, but — and here's the thing — never a finished product, never an accomplishment, always flawed in some degree or other.

The fusion is accomplished by reading these Scriptures slowly, imaginatively, prayerfully and obediently. This is the way the Bible has been read by most Christians for most of the Christian centuries, but it is not commonly read that way today. The reading style employed more often than not

the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God.

Christian faith needs continuous maintenance. It requires attending to. "If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post.

As aparências enganam: a oração nunca é a primeira palavra, mas sempre a segunda. Deus tem a primeira palavra. A oração é uma fala que responde; ela não é primariamente "petição", mas "resposta".

Self-justification is a verbal defense for restoring the appearance of righteousness without doing anything about the substance.

by contemporary Christians is fast, reductive, information-gathering and, above all, practical. We read for what we can get out of it, what we can put to use, what we think we can use—and right now.

Prayer is speech at its most alive. The breath that is breathed into us by God we breathe back to God.

Orientação espiritual significa levar a sério, com atenção e imaginação disciplinadas, o que os outros tomam com leviandade.

For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it?

Spontaneities offer one kind of pleasure and taste of sanctity, repetitions another equally pleasurable and holy.

Todos deveriam conhecer a verdade de que ninguém é dotado de tamanha prudência e sabedoria a ponto de ser adequado a si mesmo na orientação de sua própria vida espiritual. A soberba é um guia cego e engana a muitos. A luz de nosso próprio julgamento é fraca e não conseguimos prever todos os perigos ou armadilhas e erros aos quais estamos propensos na vida do espírito.

apocalyptic that has no parentage in biblical sources or gospel commitments, does promote a progeny of irresponsibility (and the brats are noisily and distressingly in evidence on every American street), but the real thing, the conceived-in-holy-wedlock apocalyptic, develops communities that are passionately patient, courageously committed to witness and work in the kingdom of God no matter how long it takes, or how much it costs.

Prayer is a way of language practiced in the presence of God in which we become more than ourselves while remaining ourselves.

Our Lord gave us the picture of the child as a model for Christian faith (Mk 10:14-16) not because of the child's helplessness but because of the child's willingness to be led, to be taught, to be blessed. God does not reduce us to a set of Pavlovian reflexes so that we mindlessly worship and pray and obey on signal; he establishes us with a dignity in which we are free to receive his word, his gifts, his grace.

The transition from a sucking infant to a weaned child, from squalling baby to quiet son or daughter, is not smooth. It is stormy and noisy. It is no easy thing to quiet yourself: sooner may we calm the sea or rule the wind or tame a tiger than quiet ourselves. It is pitched battle. The baby is denied expected comforts and flies into rages or sinks into sulks. There are sobs and struggles. The infant is facing its first great sorrow and it is in sore distress.

And I remembered Willi's prophetic portrait of me, warning me against entering the American competition to be a pastor who "gets things done" and who is "going somewhere.

Our bodies are the means of providing our souls access to God in his revelation: eat this book. A friend reports to me that one of the early rabbis selected a different part of our bodies to make the same point; he insisted that the primary body part for taking in the word of God is not the ears but the feet. You learn God, he said, not through your ears but through your feet: follow the Rabbi.

I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You'll never — I promise — regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we're at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind.

The exact meaning of Jeremiah is not certain: it may mean "the LORD exalts"; it may mean "the LORD hurls." What is certain is that "the LORD," the personal name of God, is in his name.

We are so used to considering everything through the prism of our current feelings and our most recent acquisitions that it is a radical change to consider the vast before . But if we would live well, it is necessary.