We need more Christians who take their place alongside believing and unbelieving neighbors in the daily gift exchange

God is not a supporting actor in our life movie. We exist for his purposes, not the other way around.

Excellence is being thwarted not only by laziness but by reckless attachment to causes, programs, and - in some cases, leaders.

Our weaknesses are an opportunity for God to show his strength.

The gospel is unintelligible to most people today, especially in the West, because their own particular stories are remote from the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation that is narrated in the Bible. Our focus is introspective and narrow, confided to our own immediate knowledge, experience, and intuition. Trying desperately to get others, including God, to make us happy, we cannot seem to catch a glimpse of the real story that gives us a meaningful role.

God's church is not a stage for us to perform on but a garden for us to grow in.

As we are brought into God's extraordinary kingdom through ordinary means, we are remade, no longer fashioned as competitors for commodities in a world of scarce resources, but as co-sharers with Christ in the circulation of gifts that flows outward from its source without running out.