Eugene H. Peterson Quotes
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Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . It is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.
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The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor.
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Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner.
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Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God; it whets our appetite.
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The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given, the weather conditions that prevail at the ...moment.
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The moment the organic unity of belief and behaviour is damaged in any way, we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created.
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The vocation of pastor has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.
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I didn't write because I had anything to say, but in order to find out what there was to say.
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That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.
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People learn to shop for churches; there is no loyalty to the church. They're consumers being attracted to one product or another. I think it's sacrilege, to tell you the truth, it really is.
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It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.
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The Spirit works through community. Somebody will have a stupid, screwy idea. That's okay. The point of having creeds and confessions and traditions is to keep us in touch with the obvious errors.
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The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lord God used to make us a human being. If we cultivate a lively sense of our origin and nurture a sense of continuity with it, who knows, we may also acquire humility.
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Pastors need to know what's going on in the world and what has been going on for 4,000 years. We need a way to read Scripture which is imaginative, interpretive.
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Too much of the world's happiness depends on taking from one to satisfy another. To increase my standard of living, someone in another part of the world must lower his. The worldwide crisis of hunger that we face today is a result of that method of pursuing happiness. Industrialized nations acquire appetites for more and more luxuries and higher and higher standards of living, and increasing numbers of people are made poor and hungry. It doesn't have to be that way.
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God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
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Exile (being where we don't want to be with people we don't want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself?...'I will do my best with what is here.'
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Prayer gets us in on what God is doing.
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Sabbath is not primarily about us or how it benefits us; it is about God, and how God forms us. It is not, in the first place, about what we do or don't do; it is about God - completing and resting and blessing and sanctifying. These are all things that we don't know much about......But it does mean stopping and being quiet long enough to see - open-mouthed - with wonder - resurrection wonder.....we cultivate the "fear of the Lord". Our souls are formed by what we cannot work up or take charge of. We respond and enter into what the resurrection of Jesus continues to do.
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This kingdom of God life is not a matter of waking up each morning with a list of chores or an agenda to be tended to, left on our bedside table by the Holy Spirit for us while we slept. We wake up already immersed in a large story of creation and covenant, of Israel and Jesus, the story of Jesus and the stories that Jesus told. We let ourselves be formed by these formative stories, and especially as we listen to the stories that Jesus tells, get a feel for the way he does it, the way he talks, the way he treats people, the Jesus way.
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That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.
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The poor are not a problem to be solved but a people to join.
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When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn't go off and leave us- he enters into our trouble and saves us.
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Religion is a very scary thing, because a pastor is in a position of power. And if you use that power badly, you ruin people's lives, and you ruin your own life.