Occupation: Author Birth: 1949
We should feel dissonance; we are, after all, immortals trapped in mortal surroundings. We lack unity because long ago a gap fissured open between ou….
The presence of another caring person doubles the amount of pain a person can endure..
Repentance, not proper behavior or even holiness, is the doorway to grace. And the opposite of sin is grace, not virtue..
Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love..
I begin with confession not in order to feel miserable, rather to call to mind a reality I often ignore. When I acknowledge where I stand before a pe….
Grace is heartfelt, tinged with love, a spillover gift of the God who extended undeserved favor toward us..
When I am tempted to complain about God's lack of presence, I remind myself that God has much more reason to complain about my lack of presence..
Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love..
We preach sermons, write books on apologetics, conduct city-wide evangelistic campaigns. For those alienated from the church, that approach no longer….
... learning humility is a prerequisite for grace..
Christians are simply pilgrims who acknowledge their lostness and their desire for help in finding the way..
Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross..
If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him..
We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life- by expectin….
Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calva….
One Harlem preacher likens us to the pink plastic spoons at Baskin Robbins: we give the world a foretaste of what lies ahead, the vision of the Bibli….
God does not accept me conditionally, on the basis of my performance, but bestows his love and forgiveness freely, despite my innumerable failures..
Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish..
Whoever desires to remain faithful to Jesus must communicate faith as he did, not by compelling assent but by presenting it as a true answer to basic….
All of the images of Jesus and of the kingdom are small things: be a light in the darkness..
Politics draws lines between people; in contrast, Jesus' love cuts across those lines and dispenses grace. That does not mean, of course, that Christ….