God keeps telling us to be not afraid, to go big

Love finds us where we are, not where we were.

The words we speak to each other should leave stretch marks, not bruises. Love is always picky about what it says.

I don't think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, the scripts we know offer a brand of security, of predictability, of safety for us. But the problem is, they only take us where we've already been. They loop us back to places where everyone can easily go, not necessarily where we were made to go. Living a different kind of life takes some guts and grit and a new way of seeing things.

I used to think I could shape the circumstances around me, but now I know Jesus uses circumstances to shape me.

What Jesus said we could do is leave typical behind.

There's a difference between a caper and a prank. A prank is like playing Ding-Dong-Ditch, you know, you ring the doorbell and then run and hide in the ditch. That's a prank. It has no shelf life, like reassembling the principal's car up on the roof of the gym. It's cute and everything but there's no shelf-life, and it can actually be kind of destructive. But a caper is different. It's something where everybody has made it in.