When Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn't think “I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me.” No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us - denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him - and in the greatest act of love in history, he STAYED. He said, “Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing.” He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely.

There is a direct relationship between a person's grasp and experience of God's grace, and his or her heart for justice and the poor.

Think like a prophet, serve like a priest, and plan like a king.

But resurrection is not just consolation — it is restoration. We get it all back — the love, the loved ones, the goods, the beauties of this life — but in new, unimaginable degrees of glory and joy and strength.

Job never saw why he suffered, but he saw God, and that was enough.

The Gospel is news of what God has done to reach us. It is not advice about what we must do to reach God.

Christians need the gospel as much as non-Christians do.