Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil… Our hope… is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.

Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.

Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try and find something or someone that it cannot cover. Grace is enough...

I you think you've done it, then you're wrong. Because you're not finished until you have achieved everything that you never thought you could.

What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.

Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.

Jesus comes for sinners, for those outcast...and those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams.