I'm not a pastor; I've never been on staff at a church.

And when you find love, or when you are mature enough to understand it, the feeling you get is gratitude.

I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing.

Our lives have a countdown clock that we can't see. Mine reminds me to only do work that matters.

But the people who took the bus didn't experience the city as we experienced the city. The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than we would have been if we had skipped the story and showed up at the ending an easier way.

The people I used to be surrounded by are getting along without me. Somehow, that really bugs me.

I think, in the grand epic, Jesus is the hero of our stories. And our stories, as they were, are subplots in a grand epic and our job is not to be the hero of any story. Our job is to be a saint in a story that he is telling.