The world values power, comfort, success, and recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion.

Mercy and forgiveness must be free and unmerited to the wrongdoer. If the wrongdoer has to do something to merit it, then it isn’t mercy, but forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness.

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

If I have the smile of God, all other frowns are inconsequential.

The resurrection makes Christianity the most irritating religion on the face of the earth.

If you add anything to Jesus as a requirement for being happy, that's your real king.

Contextualization is not giving people what they want. It is giving God's answers (which they probably do not want) to the questions they are asking and in forms they can comprehend.