Hope is lived when it comes alive, when we go outside of ourselves and, in joy and pain take part in the lives of others.

In the cross of Christ God is taking man dead-seriously so that he may open up for him the happy freedom of Easter. God takes upon himself the pain of negation and the God forsakenness of judgement to reconcile himself with his enemies and to give the godless fellowship with himself.

The present time of believers is no longer determined by the past. It takes its definition from the future.

God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.

There are various names for this 'Spirit of Life' because there are various life experiences.

The turn from this end [despair] to a new beginning came from three things. A blooming cherry tree, the unexpected kindness of Scottish workers and their families, and the Bible.

There were two different expectations in this land of the future. On the one hand the the optimistic belief in an unending progress with millenarianistic overtones and on the other hand the doomsday expectation of the final battle of Armageddon. Both are perspectives are uniquely American and both are inter-related.