if she wishes to be American—to be known as such and to actually belong—she must become a thing unimaginable in her home country: she must become white.

She loved nothing in the world except this woman's son, wanted him alive more than anybody, but hadn't the least bit of control over the predator that lived inside her. Totally taken over by her anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own.

Other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new...

One of the most malevolent characteristics of racist thought is that it never produces new knowledge. It seems able to merely reformulate and refigure itself in multiple but static assertions

Of all the wishes people had brought him—money, love, revenge—this seemed to him the most poignant and the one most deserving of fulfillment. A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power.

Navigating a white male world was not threatening. It wasn't even interesting. I was more interesting than they were.

Much of the alarm hovering at the borders, the gates, is stoked, it seems to me, by (1) both the threat and the promise of globalism and (2) an uneasy relationship with our own foreignness, our own rapidly disintegrating sense of belonging. Let me begin with globalization. In

You don't have to seek anyone else's approval for the life God has given you to live. You don't have to apologize for the strength, fortitude, courage, talent, beauty, or intellect your Creator has given you. Ladies, we all are "God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10).

We need to make sure we are not analyzing the events in our lives from a secular, human, worldly point of view rather than from a divine, spiritual, godly point of view.

See, you can be part of a crowd who gathers at church or even comes together to do a Bible study, but unless you recognize your true humility before the living God and your complete dependence on Him and His Word, you will only be in the vicinity. You will only be part of the Jesus Fan Club. You will go untouched. Nothing will change within you because His power will not be released to you.

A person looking into a carnival mirror couldn't accurately describe the true person who is being reflected in the mirror. Neither can you accurately say what truth is when you look through the distorted mirror of your soul. The soul within you—how you see a matter—needs to be restored. You do this by exchanging your thoughts for God's truth.

first transform what you think.