When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.

It is most comfortable to be invisible, to observe life from a distance, at one with our own intoxicating superior thoughts. But comfort and isolation are not where the surprises are. They are not where hope is.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.

I've gotten endless signs of the greatness of God's love and hilarious care, but I always end up needing a newer sign, maybe one that is cuter and more spangly.

Prayer usually means praise, or surrender, acknowledging that you have run out of bullets.

Do you still believe that I am the Resurrection and the Life? Even when you don't get what you want? Even when nothing makes sense?

It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born." That line came back to me, from out of nowhere, and I decided to practice radical hope, hope in the face of not having a clue.

I was waiting for the kind of solution where God reaches down and touches you with his magic wand and all of a sudden I would be fixed, like a broken toaster oven. But this was not the way it happened. Instead, I got one angstrom unit better, day by day.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.

We religious types, even those who detest organized religion, pray for deeper faith and a greater sense of oneness with God.