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.

Suffering is actually at the heart of the Christian story.

When the world sees us doing evangelism, they just see us recruiting. When they see us doing justice, they see God's glory.

The Bible says that our real problem is that every one of us is building our identity on something besides Jesus.

Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle-yet, the way to reality.

Our Christian hope is that we are going to live with Christ in a new earth, where there is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be.

Most people want Jesus as a consultant rather than a King, and He does not come that way.