The word 'christian' means different things to different people. To one person it means a stiff, upright, inflexible way of life, colorless and unbending. To another it means a risky, surprised-filled adventure, lived tiptoe at the edge of expectation...If we get our information from the biblical material, there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.

That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.

When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.

Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.

Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.

The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless.

Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God; it whets our appetite.