As long as you hate your enemy, a jail door is closed and a prisoner is taken. But when you try to understand and release your foe from your hatred, then the prisoner is released and that prisoner is you.

Off to one side sits a group of shepherds. They sit silently on the floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement. Their night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven and a symphony of angels. God goes to those who have time to hear him-and so on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds.

I think we live in slavery to fear. Most people don't have an answer to the death question and really don't even have a philosophy. That is a puzzle to me. I think even if I was not a Christian, I would want to at least have a personal solution to the death question. Otherwise, death is just a frightening thing.

We're important, but not essential; valuable, but not indispensable. We have a part in the play, but we are not the main act. A song to sing, but we are not the featured voice. God is.

What you and I might rate as an absolute disaster, God may rate as a pimple-level problem that will pass. He views your life the way you view a movie after you've read the book. When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater. Everyone else gasps at the crisis on the screen. Not you. Why? You've read the book. You know how the good guy gets out of the tight spot. God views your life with the same confidence. He's not only read your story...he wrote it.

He promises a lamp unto our feet, not a crystal ball into the future.

It's nothing mystical, necessarily. It's nothing secretive. It's just what we do with our body we do with our soul.