There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations.

Religion is a very scary thing, because a pastor is in a position of power. And if you use that power badly, you ruin people's lives, and you ruin your own life.

Waiting means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions.

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

I get asked, 'What do you miss most about being a pastor?' I think it's the intimacy, the incredible gift of intimacy. You go through death with somebody, with their families, and there's an intimacy that comes through that that is just incomparable.

The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lord God used to make us a human being. If we cultivate a lively sense of our origin and nurture a sense of continuity with it, who knows, we may also acquire humility.

The life of faith isn't meant for tourists. It's meant for pilgrims.