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Pity can be nearsighted and condescending shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.

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
Condescending
Shared
Pity
Changing
Suffering
Life

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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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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
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Pastors are highly susceptible to the sin of sloth.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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
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The religious leader is the most untrustworthy of leaders in no other station do we have so many opportunities for pride, covetousness and lust, and with so many excellent disguises to keep such ignobility from being found out and called to account.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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
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Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.
Eugene H. Peterson
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Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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
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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
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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
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The role of the pastor is to embody the gospel. And of course to get it embodied, which you can only do with individuals, not in the abstract.
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
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A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she acquires an appetite for the world of grace.
Eugene H. Peterson
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We've all met a certain type of spiritual person. She's a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the Bible all the time. But all she thinks about is herself. She's not a selfish person. But she's always at the center of everything she's doing.
Eugene H. Peterson
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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.'
Eugene H. Peterson
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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
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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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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.
Eugene H. Peterson