God does not merely send us a message of comfort or pull some cosmic levers in the heavens that change our circumstances. God rescues us in our suffering by personally entering into the world of suffering.
Faith is not blind. It’s a much deeper, richer, and ultimately clearer way of seeing.
We are told at the final judgment that one of the greatest ways we have of encountering Jesus on earth is through the presence of people who hunger.
The embrace of the gospel always leads, sooner or later, to the exclusion of sin and ultimately to the end of death.
Poverty of spirit comes from knowing one’s need of God.
The heart is what is broken in our human condition, and it is the focus of the Holy Spirit in the work of restoring us to the image of God.
God is not out to get us. God is out to help us. God is for us, not against us.
In the book of Revelation, Babylon has become an iconic symbol of the embodiment of wickedness and evil. There it describes not just a punishment of judgment, but an eschatological destruction of evil, finally and totally.
When the Holy Spirit goes to work it can get messy. It can be less than dignified in the eyes of sophisticated church people, but it can be a downright threat to the leadership.
We can only meaningfully understand what is going on in the Bible by understanding and staying in touch with the larger biblical story in which we are situated.
The great danger for the disciples of Jesus, then and now, is to become too prideful to admit that our knowing (experience) has not caught up with our knowledge.
Compassion is not what we do with our loose change. It’s a way of being deeply attuned to other people, seeing past their need and into their nature.
