The ancient spiritual tradition is that God gives himself fully to us in silence and solitude.

One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological.

False gods - the gods of human understanding - despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept.

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

On the last day, Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars.

Sin and forgiveness and falling and getting back up and losing the pearl of great price in the couch cushions but then finding it again, and again, and again? Those are the stumbling steps to becoming Real, the only script that's really worth following in this world or the one that's coming.

The god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.