Parents learn the uses of power and its limits. They can insist on certain outward behavior but cannot change inner attitudes. They can require obedience but not goodness - and certainly not love.

Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.

I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world?

Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.

Rather, God has commissioned us as agents of intervention in the midst of a hostile and broken world.

We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.

There is an "offense" to the Gospel no matter how graciously we present it. It includes the message that God, not humanity, is the ultimate judge of right and wrong, and that the choices we make here have eternal consequences.