God formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be.

We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.

When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.

I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will make sense only in reverse.

If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace.

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

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