People instinctively know the difference between something done with a profit motive and something done with a love motive.

Grace is heartfelt, tinged with love, a spillover gift of the God who extended undeserved favor toward us.

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

To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." 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. Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

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

What you and I think about Jesus and how we respond to Him will determine our destiny for all eternity.

Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.