“We need faith and the mind of the Lord Jesus to recognize something of lasting value in even our most ordinary tasks.”

“Grace is the most perplexing, powerful force in the universe, and, I believe, the only hope for our twisted, violent planet.”

“Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a persons heart, something for which politics has no cure. Virulent evil (racism, ethnic hatred) spreads through society like an airborne disease, one cough infects a whole busload. When moments of grace do occur, the world must pause, fall silent, and acknowledge that indeed forgiveness offers a kind of cure.There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from rancid discrimination, from denial of human rights, if our hearts aren't changed.”

“Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and predictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.”

“God formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be.”

“When he lived on earth, [Jesus] surrounded himself with ordinary people who misunderstood him, failed to exercise much spiritual power, and sometimes behaved like churlish schoolchildren.”

“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.”