Like all who search for truth out of fear, I desperately wanted someone else to tell me exactly what to do.

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

We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of long for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground. God got up.

Like all who search for truth out of fear, I desperately wanted someone else to tell me exactly what to do.

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.

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.

This is what God's kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.