Quotes from Eugene Peterson

Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that's your job, to bless. You'll be a blessing and also get a blessing.

Those who parade the rhetoric of liberation but scorn the wisdom of service do not lead people into the glorious liberty of the children of God but into a cramped and covetous squalor.

And then he prayed, "God, I'm asking for two things before I die; don't refuse me—Banish lies from my lips and liars from my presence. Give me enough food to live on, neither too much nor too little. If I'm too full, I might get independent, saying, 'God? Who needs him?' If I'm poor, I might steal and dishonor the name of my God.

Silence, he told us, was hugely undervalued in our American way of life as a way of being in communion with one another and with God. American Christians were conspicuously deficient. "Think of it as remedial silence." This would be three days for practicing silence. "These might be the quietest three days you will ever spend. Don't waste them."

These labels are inevitable and in many ways useful but the common element to them is that they are impersonal and partial; when they become all-encompassing, which they too frequently do, they distort our core identity. They say almost nothing, or what is even worse, the wrong thing, about who we actually are.

A primary task of the community of Jesus is to maintain this lifelong cultivation of love in all the messiness of its families, neighborhoods, congregations, and missions. Love is intricate, demanding, glorious, deeply human, and God-honoring, but — and here's the thing — never a finished product, never an accomplishment, always flawed in some degree or other.

"Faith" is not a generalized abstraction but a way of life that is expressed in persistent prayer.

But we do know that much of what we commonly describe as Christian behavior is not volitional at all—it is enforced. But worship is not forced. Everyone who worships does so because he or she wants to.

Drinking from the beautiful chalice of knowledge is better than adorning oneself with gold and rare gems.

What is dangerous is not ideas but the academic mind that abstracts both things and people from particular relationships into concepts. And what is dangerous is not programs but the programmatic mind that routinely sets aside the personal in order to more efficiently achieve an impersonal cause.

Preaching reveals God in action here and now -- for ME.

The life of faith has the support of an entire creation and the resources of a magnificent redemption. The structure of this world was created by God so we can live in it easily and happily as his children. The history we walk in has been repeatedly entered by God, most notably in Jesus Christ, first to show us and then to help us live full of faith and exuberant with purpose.