“Jesus, do you always show up like this, at the craziest of times and in the oddest of places? I sure hope so.”

“Being Jesus doesn't mean that I am always at the center, always doing something, always making something spectacular happen. Being Jesus simply means that I show up to be "part of" something. Maybe being Jesus isn't so much about making it happen as it is letting it happen.”

“I really hate it when a teacher has to show that she isn't behind the times by using some expression which sounds so up-to-date you know for sure she's behind the times.”

“I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

“Do you believe in Jesus?Jesse looks at me so brown-eyed it hurts.He nods."I do," he says.I sit up."I think you look like him.”

“Within the biblical worldview (which has not so much been disproved as ignored in much modern thought), heaven and earth overlap, and do so at certain specific times and places, Jesus and the Spirit being the key markers. In the same way, at certain places and moments God's future and God's past (that is, events like Jesus's death and resurrection) arrive in the present--rather as though you were to sit down to a meal and discover your great-great-grandparents, and also your great-great-grandchildren, turning up to join you. That's how God's time works.”