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.

We should feel dissonance; we are, after all, immortals trapped in mortal surroundings. We lack unity because long ago a gap fissured open between our mortal and immortal parts; theologians trace the fault line back to the Fall.

One Harlem preacher likens us to the pink plastic spoons at Baskin Robbins: we give the world a foretaste of what lies ahead, the vision of the Biblical prophets. In a world gone astray we should be activity demonstrating here and now God's will for the planet.

Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.

It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you've heard everything before and that you have nothing left to learn.

If your church conveys that spirit of condescension or judgment, it's likely not a place where grace is on tap.

Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.