I do not get to know God and then do His will. I get to know Him by doing His will.

All of the images of Jesus and of the kingdom are small things: be a light in the darkness.

In the move The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with a thousand eunuch servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten. In Christian theology, Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace is free only because the giver himself has borned the cost.

Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.

We whine about things we have little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be changed.

As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God’s name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)

Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.