The road to hell is paved with reasonable religion with a non-anxious god. Most days, I'm pretty happy driving down that road. But I keep running into this Crazy Fellow along the way. At every stop light, he jumps up and down to get my attention. He pounds on my window asking me where the heck I think I'm going. He stands on the front bumper, shouting at me to turn around. When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car. He's such a drama queen.

To paraphrase Paul, God often uses the cheesy to confound the sophisticated. He regularly honors those who are confused about his leading as if they have nailed it.

I've come to believe that God, in His wisdom, allows martyrdom in every generation in part because, without them, the reality of Christ's death for us becomes increasingly blurry... As we look at [the martyrs], the mist that sometimes enshrouds first-century Golgotha is burned away, and we see...the Lord nailed to the cross.

The Old Testament does, in fact, seem to make a distinction between the life of a child and the life of a fetus.

The cost of discipleship is to live the life God has given us, serving in mundane ways the people he's put in our path.

As is typical of this God [of Israel], he calls his people into freedom in the most unlikely place.

God's love for us is uncoerced and so freely given that it does not demand a response. But so freely is it given that it creates freedom in the recipient, so that our response is not one of obligation or duty, nor the returning of a favor, but uncoerced love.