“We whine about things we have little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be changed.”

“we persevere because we believe rewards will come.”

“Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.”

“We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination.”

“We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.”

“Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as “a place where the person you least want to live with always lives.” His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?)”

“We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.”