[Jesus] invoked a different kind of power: love, not coercion.

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

Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.

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.

Grace is everywhere, like lenses that go unnoticed because you are looking through them.

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.

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