I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, "Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you're not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.

The truth is that your spirits don't rise until you get way down.

Underneath all things means that beneath the floorboards, in the depths, in the spaces between the pebbles or sandy floor that contain the pond, that hold our own inside person, is something that can't be destroyed, a foundation that keeps all the water from sinking back into the earth. Something is there, something we need, when we come to rest, when all is lost.

My understanding of incarnation is that we are not served by getting away from the grubbiness of suffering. Sometimes we feel that we are barely pulling ourselves forward through a tight tunnel on badly scraped-up elbows. But we do come out the other side, exhausted and changed.

How did we all get so screwed up? Putting aside our damaged parents, poverty, abuse, addiction, disease, and other unpleasantries, life just damages people. There is no way around this.

We can change. People say we can't, but we do when the the stakes or the pain is high enough.

Grace isn't about "fair," but about the outrageous, radical love of God.

Every knock is a boost.

Filter your pain through the brevity of this life and the unending beauty of the next.

Your weaknesses are not an accident but deliberately allowed, very interesting phrase, deliberately allowed in your life for the purpose of demonstrating His power through you.

It often takes suffering and lost in order to remind us of how precious life is.