Quote

Jesus almost never talked in terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difficult metaphors. He was always pulling people into some kind of participation.

Eugene H. Peterson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Eugene H. Peterson
Age: 85 †
Born: 1932
Born: November 6
Died: 2018
Died: October 22
Author
Bible Translator
Theologian
Translator
University Teacher
Stanwood
Washington
Stories
Metaphor
Kind
Using
Always
Terms
Enigmatic
Never
Almost
Metaphors
People
Term
Explaining
Jesus
Participation
Difficult
Pulling
Art
Talked

More quotes by Eugene H. Peterson

Image
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.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
The silence that makes it possible to hear God speak also makes it possible for us to hear the world's words for what they really are - tinny and unconvincing lies.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
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
Image
The hard work of sowing seed in what looks like perfectly empty earth has a time of harvest. All suffering, pain, emptiness, disappointment is seed: sow it in God and He will, finally, bring a crop of joy from it.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
Pity can be nearsighted and condescending shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
Love is not a word that describes my feelings it is not a technique by which I fulfill my needs it is not an ideal, abstract and pure, on which I meditate or discourse. It is acting in correspondence with or in response to God in relation to persons.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
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.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people. They were the first ones to receive it. So when we make everything academic, we lose something.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
If we get our information from the biblical material there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
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.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
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.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
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
Image
When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else.
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?
Eugene H. Peterson
Image
The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless.
Eugene H. Peterson