We all long for someone to tell us who we are. The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God's name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.

No coffee shops or fog machines required [for church].

God's ways are higher than our ways not because he is less compassionate than we are but because he is more compassionate than we can ever imagine.

I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.

What I love about the ministry of Jesus is that he identified the poor as blessed and the rich as needy...and then he went and ministered to them both. This, I think, is the difference between charity and justice. Justice means moving beyond the dichotomy between those who need and those who supply and confronting the frightening and beautiful reality that we desperately need one another.

What each of us longs for the most is to be both fully known and fully loved. Miraculously, God feels the same way about us. God, too, wants to be fully known and fully loved. God wants this so much that He has promised to knock down every obstacle in the way, enduring even His own death, to be with us, to consummate this love.

As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ.