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Eugene H. Peterson Quotes | Quotes said by Eugene H. Peterson

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #1

    Action without prayer thins out into something very exterior. A prayerless life can result in effective action and accomplish magnificent things, but if there is no developed interiority, the action never enters into the depth and intimacy of relationships.


  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #2

    Apart from childhood and crisis, prayers have a way of being abstracted from the homely and distinctive details that are part and parcel of our ordinary and daily life.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #3

    As we grow into maturity in Christ our distinctiveness is accentuated, not blunted. General directions, useful as they are, don't take into account the details that face us as holiness takes root in the particular social and personal place we are planted.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #4

    Christian discipleship is a decision to walk in his ways, steadily and firmly, and then finding that the way integrates all our interests, passions, and gifts, our human needs and eternal aspirations. It is the way of life we were created for.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #5

    Cross and resurrection are the South and North polls, true gospel polarities, of a single, undivided, salvation world. Remove either Paul and you've got salvation.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #6

    Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders. Those who deceive others are first themselves deceived, for not many, I think, begin with evil intent. The devil, after all, is a spiritual being. His usual mode of temptation is not an obvious evil but to an apparent good. The commonest forms of devil-inspired worship do not take place furtively at black masses with decapitated cats but flourish under the bright lights of acclaim and glory, in a swirl of organ music.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #7

    God uses language to create and command us.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #8

    I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #9

    I do not have more information after reading a poem; I have more experience.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #10

    I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and comprehensive company of Jesus.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #11

    I have no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table. Given the subtleties of sin and the persistence of evil, we would soon be living in moral anarchy and political chaos if there were no provision for justice.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #12

    If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you're not doing anything.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #13

    In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There's too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliterations. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to absorb it all.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #14

    Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #15

    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.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #16

    Jesus didn't debase the holy into the secular; He infused the secular with the holy.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #17

    Jesus wasn't so much handing out information as reshaping our imaginations.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #18

    Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #19

    Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #20

    Money and machines anesthetize neediness. They put us in charge, in control. As long as the money holds out and the machines are in good repair, we don't need to pray.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #21

    My job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #22

    My uncle Ernie didn't believe in God.
    At least that's what he said. But he always
    Went to church on Christmas. Which I thought
    Seriously compromised his atheism.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #23

    Parables release the adrenaline of urgency into our bloodstream.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #24

    Pastors enter congregations vocationally in order to embrace the totality of human life in Jesus' name. We are convinced there is no detail, however unpromising, in people's lives in which Christ may not work his will. Pastors agree to stay with the people in their communities week in and week out, year in and year out, to proclaim and guide, encourage and instruct as God work his purposes (gloriously, it will eventually turn out) in the meandering and disturbingly inconstant lives of our congregations.

    This necessarily means taking seriously, and in faith, the dull routines, the empty boredom, and the unattractive responsibilities that make up much of most people's lives. It means witnessing to the transcendent in the fog and rain. It means living hopefully among people who from time to time get flickering glimpses of the Glory but then live through stretches, sometimes long ones, of unaccountable grayness. Most pastor work takes place in obscurity: deciphering grace in the shadows, searching out meaning in a difficult text, blowing on the embers of a hard-used life. This is hard work and not conspicuously glamorous.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #25

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

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #26

    Preaching reveals God in action here and now -- for ME.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #27

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

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #28

    Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune.

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #29

    Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them. The question I put to myself is not 'How many people have you spoken to about Christ this week?' but 'How many people have you listened to in Christ this week?

  • Eugene H. Peterson Quote #30

    Spirituality is no different from what we've been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It's just ordinary stuff.

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