When we ask God to move a mountain, God may give us a shovel.

There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.

Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.

The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.

Let's keep refusing to accept the world as it is and insisting on building the world we dream of. Don't let the haters have the last word.

We can ignore suffering no matter where we live. There are people who live a few miles from me who never see much poverty or the injustices that live on our doorstep.

I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me.