“We are the Borg lower your shields and surrender your weapons!”

“Someone has been trying to send me a message for weeks—my car keys missing, pyramids of coins stacked neatly in corners, lamps turned on I know I’ve shut off, toast crumbs on the counter make the profile of a face.The scuttling in the attic does not sound animal—when I climb up there’s old insulation, inches of dust and this heaviness I can’t shake.If I could mail one letter to the dead, it would be a chain letter—Send this to the ten people you loved the most— to see if it returned to me.”

“When we read Paul, we are reading somebody else’s mail—and unless we know the situation being addressed, his letters can be quite opaque...It is wise to remember that when we are reading letters never intended for us, any problems of understanding are ours and not theirs.”

“So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.”

“The end is but a new beginning for the eternal "Ba.”

“This book might also be seen as “a Christian primer.” A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book’s purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way.”

“But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak “Christian” fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor.”