Quotes from Eugene Peterson

The person of faith is not a person who has been born, luckily, with a good digestion and sunny disposition. The assumption by outsiders that Christians are naive or protected is the opposite of the truth: Christians know more about the deep struggles of life than others, more about the ugliness of sin.

But there is a broad similarity between the directions in the psalm and the contemporary movement known as "behavior modification" which in a rough-and-ready way means that you can act yourself into a new way of being.

No literature is more realistic and honest in facing the harsh facts of life than the Bible. At no time is there the faintest suggestion that the life of faith exempts us from difficulties.

Many think that the only way to change your behavior is to first change your feelings.

I called you to live at your best, to pursue righteousness, to sustain a drive toward excellence.

People who are forever breaking the rules, trying other roads, attempting to create their own system of values and truth from scratch, spend most of their time calling up someone to get them out of trouble and help repair the damage, and then ask the silly question "What went wrong?" As H. H. Farmer said, "If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters.

Oh! Can you believe it? The chaste city has become a whore! She was once all justice, everyone living as good neighbors, And now they're all at one another's throats. Your coins are all counterfeits. Your wine is watered down. Your leaders are turncoats who keep company with crooks. They sell themselves to the highest bidder and grab anything not nailed down. They never stand up for the homeless, never stick up for the defenseless.

Mortals make elaborate plans, but GOD has the last word.

But there is an older wisdom that puts it differently: by changing our behavior we can change our feelings.

The promise of the psalm—and both Hebrews and Christians have always read it this way—is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God's purposes in us.

Youth may be admired for vigor, but gray hair gives prestige to old age.

One person says, "I don't feel like worshiping; therefore I am not going to church. I will wait till I feel like it and then I will go." Another says, "I don't feel like worshiping; therefore I will go to church and put myself in the way of worship." In the process she finds herself blessed and begins, in turn, to bless.