Early on in our series through Jeremiah, I encouraged you to read Eugene Peterson’s book Run with the Horses. To entice you further, here are a few of my favorite quotes:
“The huge irony is that the more the gospel is offered in consumer terms, the more the consumers are disappointed. The gospel is not a consumer product; it doesn’t satisfy what we think of as our ‘needs.'”
“Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know.”
“God does not send us into the dangerous and exacting life of faith because we are qualified; he chooses us in order to qualify us for what he wants us to be and do.”
“We cannot afford to be naïve about evil–it must be faced. But we cannot be intimidated by it either. It will be used by God to bring good. For it is one of the most extraordinary aspects of the good news that God uses bad men to accomplish his good purposes. The great paradox of judgment is that evil becomes fuel in the furnace of salvation.”
“Too many of us spend far too much time with the editorial page and not nearly enough time with the prophetic vision. We get our interpretation of politics and economics and morals from journalists when we should be getting only information; the meaning of the world is most accurately given to us by God’s Word.”
“Believers argue with God; skeptics argue with each other.”
“What we do in secret determines the soundness of who we are in public. Prayer is the secret work that develops a life that is thoroughly authentic and deeply human.”
“The mark of a certain kind of genius is the ability and energy to keep returning to the same task relentlessly, imaginatively, curiously, for a lifetime.”
“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?”
“Judgment is not the last word; it is never the last word.”
“Hope is buying into what we believe. …It is, of course, far easier to languish in despair than to live in hope, for when we live in despair we don’t have to do anything or risk anything.”