ON LIVING WELL

Never-before-published stories, sayings, and biblical teachings from the beloved author and translator of The Message Bible. The book offers clear insights to fuel a well-lived human life with faithful Christian wisdom that speaks direcly to many key issues including money, time, relationships, and community.

Over the course of decades as a pastor, professor, and bestselling Christian author, Eugene H. Peterson drew life-changing spiritual insights from a rich well of his own down-to-earth life experience and his careful biblical study. While many of us are familiar with Peterson's bestselling paraphrased bible translation, The Message, or his books for pastors, most of us have never had the chance to encounter his direct pastoral wisdom on many of the key topics of everyday life.

On Living Well collects gems of Peterson's wisdom, focusing where faith meets the joy and rigor of daily life, including on the topics of generosity, community, relationships, worship, and inner peace:

• “We do not become more spiritual by becoming less material. The life of faith takes place in a place—where there are rocks and water. . . . The life of faith is mixed with the life of everything else: violence and sex and greed and commerce and government. It is powerful when we realize the unspeakable ordinariness of the life of faith.”

• “Giving is the style of the universe. Giving is woven into the fabric of existence. If we try to live by getting instead of giving, we go against the stream. It is like going against the law of gravity—the result is bruises and broken bones.”

Ideal as a daily spiritual touchpoint or simply to nourish a heart hungry for the warm wisdom of a true pastor, this book is a rich feast for the soul, encouraging the meaningful simplicity of human life well-lived for Jesus in a world of both beauty and difficulty.

Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message Bible, authored more than thirty books, including Every Step an Arrival, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, and the spiritual classics Run with the Horses and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. He earned a degree in philosophy from Seattle Pacific University, a graduate degree in theology from New York Theological Seminary, and a master's degree in Semitic languages from John Hopkins University. He also received several honorary doctoral degrees. He was founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, where he and his wife, Jan, served for twenty-nine years. Peterson held the title of professor emeritus of spiritual theology at Regent College, British Columbia, from 1998 until his death in 2018.