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Run With the Horses
Run With the Horses (REV 10) by Peterson, Eugene H [Paperback (2009)]
- GenresNonfiction
Paperback
Published January 1, 2009
8 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Eugene H. Peterson
432 books1,005 followersEugene H. Peterson was a pastor, scholar, author, and poet. For many years he was James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He also served as founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. He had written over thirty books, including Gold Medallion Book Award winner The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language a contemporary translation of the Bible. After retiring from full-time teaching, Eugene and his wife Jan lived in the Big Sky Country of rural Montana. He died in October 2018.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 1, 2024
This was really encouraging. Peterson is very quotable. Each chapter is about a scene from Jeremiah’s life. So there’s a lot about hope & trust in God when circumstances say otherwise. Really good chapter on prayer & on living in exile. Here are some of my favorite quotes.
“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. This realization has a practical result, no longer do we run here and there, panicked, and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather we come to God, who knows us, and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops.”
"What we do in secret determines the soundness of who we are in public."
“God feels our pains, but He does not indulge our self-pity.”
“The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible but to live as deeply as possible”
“They were pushed to the edge of existence, where they thought they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they found that in fact they had been pushed to the center, where God was. They experienced not bare survival but abundant life.”
“There a 2 kinds of people: some look at life and complain of what is not there; others look at life and rejoice in what is there.”
I also really liked this description of Jeremiah, “deeply in touch with a reality that most of us ignore and without anxiety about what people thought about him.”
“Hope is living constantly, patiently, expectantly, resiliently, joyously in the efficacy of God’s Word… It is fashionable to espouse the latest cynicism. If we live in hope, we go against the stream.”
“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. This realization has a practical result, no longer do we run here and there, panicked, and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather we come to God, who knows us, and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops.”
"What we do in secret determines the soundness of who we are in public."
“God feels our pains, but He does not indulge our self-pity.”
“The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible but to live as deeply as possible”
“They were pushed to the edge of existence, where they thought they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they found that in fact they had been pushed to the center, where God was. They experienced not bare survival but abundant life.”
“There a 2 kinds of people: some look at life and complain of what is not there; others look at life and rejoice in what is there.”
I also really liked this description of Jeremiah, “deeply in touch with a reality that most of us ignore and without anxiety about what people thought about him.”
“Hope is living constantly, patiently, expectantly, resiliently, joyously in the efficacy of God’s Word… It is fashionable to espouse the latest cynicism. If we live in hope, we go against the stream.”
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July 18, 2024Ch 1 What Makes You Think You Can Race Against Horses?
It is hard to linger in that dull world without being dulled.
THE PUZZLE IS WHY SO MANY PEOPLE LIVE so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely.
We find that Scripture is sparing in the information that it gives on people while it is lavish in what it tells us about God. It refuses to feed our lust for hero worship.
Fan clubs encourage secondhand living.
we are convinced that we are plain and ordinary.
We are prevented from following in another’s footsteps and are called to an incomparable association with Christ. The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original.
We see what is possible: anyone and everyone is able to live a zestful life that spills out of the stereotyped containers that a sin-inhibited society provides.
It is these persons who are conscious of participating in what God is saying and doing that are most human, most alive.
In Jeremiah it is clear that the excellence comes from a life of faith, from being more interested in God than in self, and has almost nothing to do with comfort or esteem or achievement.
want to provide fresh documentation that the only way that any one of us can live at our best is in a life of radical faith in God. Every one of us needs to be stretched to live at our best, awakened out of dull moral habits, shaken out of petty and trivial busywork.
Vitezslav Gardavsky, the Czech philosopher and martyr who died in 1978, took Jeremiah as his “image of man” in his campaign against a society that carefully planned every detail of material existence but eliminated mystery and miracle, and squeezed all freedom from life. The terrible threat against life, he said in his book God Is Not Yet Dead, is not death, nor pain, nor any variation on the disasters that we so obsessively try to protect ourselves against with our social systems and personal stratagems. The terrible threat is “that we might die earlier than we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years.”
Life is difficult, Jeremiah. Are you going to live cautiously or courageously?
I called you to a life of purpose far beyond what you think yourself capable of living and promised you adequate strength to fulfill your destiny.
Do you want to shuffle along with this crowd, or run with the horses?
CH 2 JEREMIAH
All the great stories of the world elaborate one of two themes: that all life is an exploration like that of the Odyssey or that all life is a battle like that of the Iliad.
Life is a continuous exploration of ever more reality.
Some people as they grow up become less.
Other people as they grow up become more. Life is not an inevitable decline into dullness; for some it is an ascent into excellence.
Any time that we move from personal names to abstract labels or graphs or statistics, we are less in touch with reality and diminished in our capacity to deal with what is best and at the center of life.
In many situations the public image that people have of us is more important than the personal relations that we develop with them. Every time that we go along with this movement from the personal to the impersonal, from the immediate to the remote, from the concrete to the abstract, we are diminished, we are less. Resistance is required if we will retain our humanity.
Naming is a way of hoping.
We are in process of becoming either less or more.
Jeremiah kept on doing what everybody starts out doing, being human. And he didn’t stop.
The deformation to which prophets and priests and wise men are subject is to market God as a commodity, to use God to legitimize selfishness.
He was always reaching out, always finding more truth, getting in touch with more of God, becoming more himself, more human.
CH 3 BEFORE
The before is the root system of the visible now.
“Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you: A prophet to the nations—that’s what I had in mind for you” (Jer 1:5).
Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives.
I have a set-apart place that only I can fill.
If we try to live by getting instead of giving, we are going against the grain. It is like trying to go against the law of gravity—the consequence is bruises and broken bones.
The mature swallow knew what the chick did not—that it would fly—that there was no danger in making it do what it was perfectly designed to do.
He knew me, therefore I am no accident; he chose me, therefore I cannot be a zero; he gave me, therefore I must not be a consumer.
CH 4 IM ONLY A BOY
We are practiced in pleading inadequacy in order to avoid living at the best that God calls us to.
Pascal said, “Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.”
It is not our feelings that determine our level of participation in life, nor our experience that qualifies us for what we will do and be; it is what God decides about us.
At some deep level we need to be convinced, and in some way or other we need periodic reminders,
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.
We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don’t see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.
Jeremiah was shaped by the visions, not by the fashions of the day, not by his feelings about himself.
The thorough integration of strength and sensitivity, of firmness and feeling, is rare.
CH 5 DON’T FOR A MINUTE BELIEVE THE LIES
It is hard to linger in that dull world without being dulled.
THE PUZZLE IS WHY SO MANY PEOPLE LIVE so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely.
We find that Scripture is sparing in the information that it gives on people while it is lavish in what it tells us about God. It refuses to feed our lust for hero worship.
Fan clubs encourage secondhand living.
we are convinced that we are plain and ordinary.
We are prevented from following in another’s footsteps and are called to an incomparable association with Christ. The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original.
We see what is possible: anyone and everyone is able to live a zestful life that spills out of the stereotyped containers that a sin-inhibited society provides.
It is these persons who are conscious of participating in what God is saying and doing that are most human, most alive.
In Jeremiah it is clear that the excellence comes from a life of faith, from being more interested in God than in self, and has almost nothing to do with comfort or esteem or achievement.
want to provide fresh documentation that the only way that any one of us can live at our best is in a life of radical faith in God. Every one of us needs to be stretched to live at our best, awakened out of dull moral habits, shaken out of petty and trivial busywork.
Vitezslav Gardavsky, the Czech philosopher and martyr who died in 1978, took Jeremiah as his “image of man” in his campaign against a society that carefully planned every detail of material existence but eliminated mystery and miracle, and squeezed all freedom from life. The terrible threat against life, he said in his book God Is Not Yet Dead, is not death, nor pain, nor any variation on the disasters that we so obsessively try to protect ourselves against with our social systems and personal stratagems. The terrible threat is “that we might die earlier than we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years.”
Life is difficult, Jeremiah. Are you going to live cautiously or courageously?
I called you to a life of purpose far beyond what you think yourself capable of living and promised you adequate strength to fulfill your destiny.
Do you want to shuffle along with this crowd, or run with the horses?
CH 2 JEREMIAH
All the great stories of the world elaborate one of two themes: that all life is an exploration like that of the Odyssey or that all life is a battle like that of the Iliad.
Life is a continuous exploration of ever more reality.
Some people as they grow up become less.
Other people as they grow up become more. Life is not an inevitable decline into dullness; for some it is an ascent into excellence.
Any time that we move from personal names to abstract labels or graphs or statistics, we are less in touch with reality and diminished in our capacity to deal with what is best and at the center of life.
In many situations the public image that people have of us is more important than the personal relations that we develop with them. Every time that we go along with this movement from the personal to the impersonal, from the immediate to the remote, from the concrete to the abstract, we are diminished, we are less. Resistance is required if we will retain our humanity.
Naming is a way of hoping.
We are in process of becoming either less or more.
Jeremiah kept on doing what everybody starts out doing, being human. And he didn’t stop.
The deformation to which prophets and priests and wise men are subject is to market God as a commodity, to use God to legitimize selfishness.
He was always reaching out, always finding more truth, getting in touch with more of God, becoming more himself, more human.
CH 3 BEFORE
The before is the root system of the visible now.
“Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you: A prophet to the nations—that’s what I had in mind for you” (Jer 1:5).
Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives.
I have a set-apart place that only I can fill.
If we try to live by getting instead of giving, we are going against the grain. It is like trying to go against the law of gravity—the consequence is bruises and broken bones.
The mature swallow knew what the chick did not—that it would fly—that there was no danger in making it do what it was perfectly designed to do.
He knew me, therefore I am no accident; he chose me, therefore I cannot be a zero; he gave me, therefore I must not be a consumer.
CH 4 IM ONLY A BOY
We are practiced in pleading inadequacy in order to avoid living at the best that God calls us to.
Pascal said, “Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.”
It is not our feelings that determine our level of participation in life, nor our experience that qualifies us for what we will do and be; it is what God decides about us.
At some deep level we need to be convinced, and in some way or other we need periodic reminders,
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.
We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don’t see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.
Jeremiah was shaped by the visions, not by the fashions of the day, not by his feelings about himself.
The thorough integration of strength and sensitivity, of firmness and feeling, is rare.
CH 5 DON’T FOR A MINUTE BELIEVE THE LIES
August 13, 2024
This is one of my favorite studies
July 8, 2025
Family read: June 2025.
Peterson is an absolute master with words - his writing is poetry. I really enjoyed this overview of Jeremiah.
Peterson is an absolute master with words - his writing is poetry. I really enjoyed this overview of Jeremiah.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews