We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination.

Whatever else it is, the kingdom of God is decidedly not a call to violent revolution.

Prayer is a place where God and humans meet.

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

And perhaps, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit may be our very best defense against a materialist view of mankind here on earth.

As Ecclesiastes tells it, a wholesale devotion to pleasure will, paradoxically, lead to a state of utter despair.

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.