Quotes from Eugene Peterson

I do not have more information after reading a poem; I have more experience.

Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed expectation in what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. We refuse to label the others as one thing or another. We refuse to predict our brother's behavior, our sister's growth.

Every time we worship our minds are informed, our memories refreshed with the judgments of God, we are familiarized with what God says, what he has decided, the ways he is working out our salvation.

Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love unconditionally.

As we grow into maturity in Christ our distinctiveness is accentuated, not blunted. General directions, useful as they are, don't take into account the details that face us as holiness takes root in the particular social and personal place we are planted.

Where relationships are warm and expectancies fresh, we are already beginning to enjoy the life together that will be completed in our life everlasting.

We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ.

Prayer is what develops in us after we step out of the center and begin responding to the center, to Jesus.

But having gotten what we had always wanted, we find we have not gotten what we wanted at all. We are less fulfilled than ever.

We have discovered in these psalms beautiful lines, piercing insights, dazzling truths, stimulating words. We have found that the world in which these psalms are sung is a world of adventure and challenge, of ardor and meaning. We have realized that while there are certainly difficulties in the way of faith, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called dull.

So watch your step, friends. Make sure there's no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God.

What we are after is first noticing and then participating in the way the large world of the Bible absorbs the much smaller world of our science and economics and politics that provides the so-called worldview in which we are used to working out our daily concerns.