Eugene Peterson passed away yesterday morning. His writing and ministry has had a deep impact on my life. He will be dearly missed, but I’m thrilled that he’s in the presence of the Lord!! I thought I’d share my top 10 favorite quotes of his!
- 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.
- Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing
- Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves
- How can I lead people into the quiet place beside the still waters if I am in perpetual motion? How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place.
- Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshipped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.
- Waiting in prayer is a disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
- Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
- 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.
- We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us.
- 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 – tiny and unconvincing lies.
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