Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace.

What I see in the Bible, especially in the book of Psalms, which is a book of gratitude for the created world, is a recognition that all good things on Earth are God's, every good gift is from above. They are good if we recognize where they came from and if we treat them the way the Designer intended them to be treated.

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.

I do not get to know God and then do His will. I get to know Him by doing His will.

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.

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

prayer, and only prayer, restores my vision to one that more resembles God's. i awake from blindness to see that wealth lurks as a terrible danger, not a goal worth striving for; that value depends not on race or status but on the image of God every person bears; that no amount of effort to improve physical beauty has much relevance for the world beyond.