In many cases, change is not a function of life's cruelty but instead a function of God's graciousness.

Sometimes the happiest ending isn't the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are

I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.

I believe that God is making all things new. I believe that Christ overcame death and that pattern is apparent all through life and history: life from death, water from a stone, redemption from failure, connection from alienation. I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything's easy.

There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.

Sometimes we have to leave home in order to find out what we left there, and why it matters so much.

Friendship is an opportunity to act on God's behalf in the lives of the people that we're close to, reminding each other who God is.