The surgery of life hurts. It helps me, though, to know that the surgeon himself, the Wounded Surgeon, has felt every stab of pain and every sorrow.

Only in prayer can we learn to love God with all our heart, mind and soul.

A God wise enough to create me and the world I live in is wise enough to watch out for me.

One of the things I found is that the things we want to say for well-intentioned motives often cause more harm than good. People don't need our words. They mainly need our presence, they need our love. And if you come in too quickly with explanations, you may do more harm than good.

Eugene Peterson points out that "the root meaning in Hebrew of salvation is to be broad, to become spacious, to enlarge. It carries the sense of deliverance from an existence that has become compressed, confined and cramped." God wants to set free, to make it possible for us to live open and loving lives with God and our neighbors. "I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free," wrote the psalmist.

The church works best not as a power center, rather as a countercultural community - in the world but not of it - that shows others how to live the most fulfilled and meaningful life on earth. In modern society that means rejecting the false gods of independence, success, and pleasure and replacing them with love for God and neighbor.

Christ bears the wounds of the church, his body, just as he bore the wounds of crucifixion. I sometimes wonder which have hurt worse.