Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.

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.

By focusing too myopically on what we want God to do on our behalf, we may miss the significance of what he has already done.

Christians have an important role to play in contending that no human life is "devoid of value." We can do so through courageous protest, as happened in Germany, as well, as in compassionate care for the most vulnerable members of society, as Mother Teresa did. In both approaches theology - what one believes about God and human life - matters. The world desperately needs that good news.

The church is, above all, a place to receive grace: it brings forgiven people together with the aim of equipping us to dispense grace to others.

Prayer unfolds in the stillness of the soul.

The problem of pain meets its match in the scandal of grace.