Quote

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.'

Eugene H. Peterson

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Eugene H. Peterson
Age: 85 †
Born: 1932
Born: November 6
Died: 2018
Died: October 22
Author
Bible Translator
Theologian
Translator
University Teacher
Stanwood
Washington
Place
Forces
Best
Sorry
Find
Focus
Live
Decision
Feel
Attention
Feels
Wrong
World
Force
Energies
People
Energy
Exile

More quotes by Eugene H. Peterson

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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
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People are not problems to be solved. They are mysteries to be explored.
Eugene H. Peterson
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It's essential for us to develop an imagination that is participatory. Art is the primary way in which this happens. It's the primary way in which we become what we see or hear.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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.
Eugene H. Peterson
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No life of faith can be lived privately. There must be overflow into the lives of others.
Eugene H. Peterson
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It is easier to find guides, someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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
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The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We're called to have people follow Jesus. We're called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness gets headlines.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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
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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.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God it whets our appetite.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Spirituality is no different from what weve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. Its just ordinary stuff.
Eugene H. Peterson
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When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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.
Eugene H. Peterson
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One of the reasons that Christians read Scripture repeatedly and carefully is to find out just how God works in Jesus Christ so that we can work in the name of Jesus Christ.
Eugene H. Peterson