Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others.

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.

For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.

Shame--what happened when my mother, the dragon, huffed and puffed and blew my self down.

Jesus hung out with ragamuffins.

Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.

When being is divorced from doing, pious thoughts become an adequate substitute for washing dirty feet.