Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.

Spiritual transformation is not a matter of trying harder, but of training wisely.

It only makes sense to ask God for guidance in the context of a life committed to "seeking first the kingdom."

How hard is it for God to get your attention? Do you regularly practice turning aside in your day? That is, taking a moment to listen to God- because God, through the Holy Spirit, really is speaking, because we know, every place is filled with the presence of God. There is not an inch of space, not a moment of time, that God does not inhabit.

If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended - we could not make enough room inside the building.

One of the hardest things in the world is to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother.