Hope, for the Christian, is not wishful thinking or mere blind optimism. It is a mode of knowing, a mode within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen.

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Worship is love on its knees before the beloved; just as mission is love on its feet to serve the beloved

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Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.

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What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.

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True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.

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Tolerance is a cheap, low-grade parody of love. Tolerance is not a great virtue to aspire to. Love is much tougher and harder.

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When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven't yet really understood who he is or what he's done.

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God is the one who satisfies the passion for justice, the longing for spirituality, the hunger for relationship, the yearning for beauty. And God, the true God, is the God we see in Jesus of Nazareth, Israel's Messiah, the world's true Lord.

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If you have never felt or known the sheer power and strength of God's love, take another look at Jesus dying on the cross.

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Wherever St. Paul went, there was a riot. Wherever I go, they serve tea.

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