Quote

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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Eugene H. Peterson
Age: 85 †
Born: 1932
Born: November 6
Died: 2018
Died: October 22
Author
Bible Translator
Theologian
Translator
University Teacher
Stanwood
Washington
Pain
Disappointment
Earth
Perfectly
Looks
Seeds
Sowing
Hard
Finally
Crop
Work
Empty
Crops
Time
Joy
Harvest
Like
Bring
Seed
Suffering
Emptiness

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Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
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Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.
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Pity can be nearsighted and condescending shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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My job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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If we get our information from the biblical material there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.
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Prayer gets us in on what God is doing.
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I get asked, 'What do you miss most about being a pastor?' I think it's the intimacy, the incredible gift of intimacy. You go through death with somebody, with their families, and there's an intimacy that comes through that that is just incomparable.
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I cannot fail to call the congregation to worship God, to listen to his Word, to offer themselves to God.
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Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?
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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