“But the best reason to pray is that God is really there. In praying, our unbelief gradually starts to melt. God moves smack into the middle of even an ordinary day. He is no longer someone we theorize about. He is someone we want to be near.”

“So as we grow in Christ, we grow into new families, formed by a deep common love of God. The bond, it seems, is sacramental.”

“Friendships-in-God are not found by seeking friendship, but by seeking God. Those who draw closer to God find such friendships simply burst upon them. These bombshells of intense affection explode without warning in our lives. But they are good surprises.”

“Prayer, it seems, disposes us to new friendship, in that it more and more lays us open to experience from any source, makes us sensitive to every aspect of existence, every leaf, every ray of light, every sorrow, every pain.”

“When we lift someone else's load, we add color not only to our lives but to the lives of others as well.”

“I honestly never once heard them fight. They yelled at us kids all the time, but never at each other. My siblings and I joke to this day about how the reason we have trouble in relationships is because we never learned how to fight from our parents.”

“Never have an Ordinary Day.”