At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.

Yet weakness—or neediness—is a valuable asset in God's community. Jesus introduced a new era in which weakness is the new strength. Anything that reminds us that we are dependent on God and other people is a good thing. Otherwise, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are self-sufficient, and arrogance is sure to follow. We need help, and God has given us his Spirit and each other to provide it.

The ordinary is not good enough for us; our hubris wants something grandiose. But the ordinary done in obedience to Christ is beautiful, inspired, and oftentimes heroic.

We crave autonomy. Autonomy is closely linked to arrogance. They are both expressions of human pride, but autonomy suggests that we want to be separate from more than over. We want to establish the rules rather than submit to the lordship of the living God. This was the essence of Adam's original sin. We want to interpret the world according to our system of thought. We want to establish our own parallel universe, separate from God's.

What is the way out of shame? It is the way of humility, not humiliation. It is the way of being known, not exposed.

How many crimes are committed simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.

Dare to face the situation...Man has become a superman... But the superman with the superhuman power has not risen to the level of superhuman reason. To the degree which his power grows he becomes more and more a poor man... It must shake up our conscience that we become all the more inhuman the more we grow into superhuman.

The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful --because the reproached self isn't abandoned; it remains intact.

Dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

If you're running for office, it's tough to be an incumbent. It's tough to run out of Washington. It's better to be an outsider. And Establishment support doesn't help; it more likely hurts.

To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man.

I am a coach on the outside of the establishment and that works.