Past and future exist only in our memory. The present moment, though, is outside of time, its Eternity. In India, they use the word karma, for lack of any better term. It isnt what you did in the past that will affect the present. Its what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.

When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive.

The revelation can change your situation.

When the devil reminds us of our past sins, that is condemnation;

Pruning includes purging the wrong thinking, the negative attitudes, and the wrong people that surround you.

To be a Christian is to live positively and not destructively, to make ugly things beautiful, and to make chaos meaningful.

Still, shifting my thinking on the Bible did not mean I was losing my faith in God. In fact, I had the growing sense that God was inviting me down this path, encouraging it even.

Paul doesn't call followers of Jesus "Christians." He calls them "in Christ." That isn't the easiest thing to understand, let alone explain, but it suggests an intimacy with Jesus that defies words. That intimacy also includes—somehow—suffering.

My commitment to follow through on my choice came with a cost. I tried very hard, for years, with complete transparency, to blend together old and new—the particular Christian tradition that birthed me and for which I had deep respect, and the bigger Bible I had come to know, was excited about, and could not deny without deceiving myself and others.

reimagining

Following Jesus isn't like a burden we carry on our shoulders. It's an internal process so radical and painful that the best way to describe it for people of that day is as the act of being bound and nailed like a criminal to a piece of wood lifted above the ground where you are left hanging in naked humiliation and intense pain until you suffocate.

We have to die, and the choice is ours. If we don't, we are still holding on to something. And if we are holding on, we aren't really following. Just sort of following. Standing around. [Oh God, what did I sign up for? This Christianity thing is hard. Deep breath . . .] The apostle Paul chimes in, too: I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:19—20)