A rousing tale of techno-geek rebellion, as necessary and dangerous as file sharing, free speech, and bottled water on a plane.
By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived.
I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship. And my word is this: I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are, and not as you should be. Because you’re never going to be as you should be.
Do you believe that the God of Jesus loves you beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity—that he loves you in the morning sun and in the evening rain—that he loves you when your intellect denies it, your emotions refuse it, your whole being rejects it. Do you believe that God loves without condition or reservation and loves you this moment as you are and not as you should be.
Our culture says that ruthless competition is the key to success. Jesus says that ruthless compassion is the purpose of our journey.
Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don’t have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
When I get interested in a new topic I teach a class on it. There's a graduate seminar I teach in which the students and I try to expand the terminology we use to talk about poetry as well as expand our notion of what makes a poem - we read source texts on architecture, dance, photography, film and the graphic novel.
If you want to be on top, you've got to have broad shoulders, because as fast as you get there, the faster they try to knock you down.
There are an awful lot of readers who won't pick up a book if they think it's got anything horrific in it, or paranormal or whatever.
She had sand in her mouth and between her toes, the briny wind raising goose bumps on her skin, and the sweetest, spellbound feeling spilling from her heart. She could, at that moment, have died for him.