You are to love with the same kind of love that God loves you, which is total unconditional love. This is the summit and goal of all Jesus’ moral teaching, and we cannot possibly follow it apart from divine union.

If we focus on finding common ground with one another, we’re less likely to end up in irreconcilable disputes. We might never come around to another’s point of view completely, but both sides may move closer to the middle.

The revelation of the Gospels is that our God is bigger and greater and more loving and trustworthy than even the best human being we have known.

Faith is the leap into the water, now with the lived experience that there is One who can and will catch you—and lead you where you need to go!

Forgiveness is constant from God’s side, which should become a calm, joyous certainty on our side. Mercy received will be mercy passed on.

We have an obligation as Christians to make sure we don’t settle for having merely our own needs met.

I see the three temptations as the primal and universal temptations that all humans must face before they dare take on any kind of power—as Jesus is about to do.

Isaiah tries to describe what a just people and country would look like if they fasted from the right things.

Isaiah says explicitly that God prefers another kind of fasting which changes our actual lifestyle and not just punishes our body.