Sunday morning for more than 20 years , Peterson would read an Alexander Whyte sermon before preaching his own .
Those three luminaries served as watchmen on the wall . “ They watched him as he studied and read ,” said his biographer , Winn Collier . “ They watched as he labored over words to deliver , in prayer and from the pulpit .” Again , every success story has a backstory ! There are people who are looking over our shoulders , people on whose shoulders we stand .
Along with those portraits , Eugene Peterson had a standing meeting on his calendar with “ FD ” three afternoons a week . Those initials stood for “ Fyodor Dostoevsky .” During a difficult stretch of leadership , Peterson read Dostoevsky ’ s entire corpus . “ Thanks to Dostoevsky ,” he said , “ God and passion would never again be at risk .”
Who is your cloud of witnesses ?
Whose portraits hang on the walls of your soul ?
Who believed in you when you doubted yourself ?
When Sidney Poitier was a teenager , he auditioned for an acting role at the prestigious American Negro Theatre in Harlem . He didn ’ t get the part because he couldn ’ t read the script . So Poitier started working as a dishwasher . One day an elderly Jewish waiter saw Poitier with a newspaper and asked him , “ What ’ s new in the paper ?” Poitier said , “ I can ’ t tell you what ’ s in the paper , because I can ’ t read very well .”
After many weeks of this man ’ s patient mentoring , Poitier learned to read well enough to land an apprentice role at the American Negro Theatre . When he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute half a century later , he said , “ I must also pay thanks to an elderly Jewish waiter who took time to help a young Black dishwasher learn to read .” Poitier paid tribute with the ultimate compliment : “ A little bit of him is in everything I do .”
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