Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how much this hurts." The cross is God's way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments. The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, "Me too.

I believe that God is love. I believe that Jesus came to show us this love, to give us this love, to teach us about this love, so that we could live in this love and extend it to others.

The life you want begins by embracing the life you have.

I would say that the powerful, revolutionary thing about Jesus' message is that he says, 'What do you do with the people that aren't like you? What do you do with the Other? What do you do with the person that's hardest to love?' . . . That's the measure of a good religion, is - you can love the people who are just like you; that's kind of easy. So what Jesus does is takes the question and talks about fruit. He's interested in what you actually produce. And that's a different discussion. How do we love the people in the world that are least like us?

When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.

The world is desperately in need of people who will break themselves open and pour themselves out for the reconciliation of all things- that's what the world needs.

You can be living in a big house, driving a nice car, going on exotic vacations and still be empty inside, crippled with fear and dread.