True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.

The point of justice and mercy anyway is not ‘they deserve it’ but ‘this is the way God’s world should be’, and we are called to do those things that truly anticipate the way God’s world WILL be.

From my student days I found him a compelling and fascinating, though often puzzling, figure. It's a lifelong fascination now and I don't expect that to stop! His vision of God, God's faithfulness, God's purposes and so on is so much bigger and richer than almost any subsequent Christian thinker has ever managed. In addition, I have always loved ancient history, especially the history of the early Roman empire, and of course Paul fits right into that.

The New Testament picks up from the Old the theme that God intends, in the end, to put the whole creation to rights.

God will himself one day hold all humans, and all human governments, to account, but the church has the responsibility in the present to speak words of truth and judgment in advance of that final holding-to-account.

I regard this conclusion as coming in the same sort of category, of historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70

To open the Bible is to open a window toward Jerusalem, as Daniel did (6:10), no matter where our exile may have taken us.