What a privilege we have to tell the world how Christ has come to meet our most critical and foundational needs: identity, acceptance, security and significance.

But when you know who you are in Christ, you no longer need to be threatened by people or compete with them, because you are already secure and loved.

I auditioned for the role of an angel in the Nativity play at school. I didn't get it. I auditioned for Mary; didn't get it. So I made up the character of the sheep who sat next to Baby Jesus.

Our mission is nothing less (or more) than participating with God in this grand story until he brings it to its guaranteed climax.

Mission is not ours; mission is God's. Certainly, the mission of God is the prior reality out of which flows any mission that we get involved in. Or, as has been nicely put, it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world but that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission-God's mission.14

It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission — God's mission. Chris Wright

Good actions are the invisible hinges on the doors of heaven.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

Carve as we will the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny constantly reappears in it.

It was a garbage heap, and it was Sinai.

No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.

No man was created good by God, nor can be made entirely bad by man.