You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.

God doesn't reveal his grand design. He reveals Himself.

They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb.

...words are not only meaning but music and magic and power.

The difference to me is not between the believers on one hand and the nonbelievers on the other hand. It's between people who carry in their hearts some sense of what the word "God," at least to me, means, which is a loving, creating, everlastingly renewing presence deeply concerned with the well-being of the earth and all its creatures.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

The world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is worldly language.