You dont fall into love. You commit to it. Love is saying I will be there no matter what.

Jesus Christ as only an example will crush you. You'll never be able to live up to it. But Jesus Christ as the Lamb will save you.

As things are brought back under Christ's rule and authority, they are restored to health, beauty, and freedom.

While Christianity was able to agree with pagan writers that inordinate attachment to earthly goods can lead to unnecessary pain and grief, it also taught that the answer to this was not to love things less but to love God more than anything else. Only when our greatest love is God, a love that we cannot lose even in death, can we face all things with peace. Grief was not to be eliminated but seasoned and buoyed up with love and hope.

If his suffering did not make Jesus give up on us, nothing will.

Suffering is the stripping of our hope in finite things, therefore we do not put our ultimate hope in anything finite.

The gospel is not only the way to enter the kingdom; it is the way to live in the kingdom.