A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
Discipleship In An Instant Society
by Eugene H. Peterson
Summary
We, like every other generation of Jesus’s followers, live in the midst of unique challenges. We learn and grow as Jesus guides us through our life and toward our home in the Father’s house.
The Psalms can be viewed as a guidebook—a ‘How To’ manual of faith—written by people who have walked the path ahead of us. They teach us to cry out to God in our pain, encourage us to continue searching until we find where He is in our circumstances, and help us to to live well and wisely as people positioned between God’s past faithfulness and His future promises.
Author’s Website
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction - By Eugene H. Peterson
Favorite Quotes
“A psalm is not a lecture; it is a song. In a psalm we have the observable evidence of what happens when a person of faith goes about the business of believing and loving and following God. We don’t have a rule book defining the action, we have a snapshot of the players playing the game.”
“We are not scavenging the dark alleys of the world, poking in its garbage cans for a bare subsistence. We are traveling in the light, toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shape our days.”
“By joining Jesus and the psalm we learn a way of work which does not acquire things or amass possessions but responds to God and develops relationships. People are at the center of Christian work.”
“A Christian who stays put is no better than a statue. A person who leaps about constantly is under suspicion of being not a man but a jumping jack. What we require is obedience—the strength to stand and the willingness to leap and the sense to know when to do which. Which is exactly what we get when an accurate memory of God’s ways is combined with a lively hope in his promises.”
Check out other books about the Psalms on my Reading List
