We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage. Jesus and the early Christians had a marvelous political imagination. They turned all the presumptions and ideas of power and blessing upside down.

Our churches should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated.

We say it is idealistic to think we can continue to live the way we live - with 5% of the world using half the world's resources, with $20,000 a second being spent on war.

Sometimes our tunnel vision is limited to what we see outside our window. Until racial injustice becomes personal then I don't think it moves us in our gut.

How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?

We might hope to change the world through better, bigger programs to stop global warming, but global warming will not end unless people become less greedy and less wasteful, gaining a fresh vision of what it means to love our global neighbor.

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