There is an extraordinary power in storytelling that stirs the imagination and makes an indelible impression on the mind.

Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion. God's love for you and his choice of you constitute your worth. Accept that, and let it become the most important thing in your life.

Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.

Stop comparing or boast at your victories. He was referring to enormous vitality and strength of God of Jesus seeking union with us. The living acts of a Christian become somehow the acts of Christ.

Do you honestly believe God likes you, not just loves you because theologically God has to love you?

If in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross.

The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity.