A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine. Above all, mind what you say. “Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire”—that’s the truth.

There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.

But hope deferred is still hope.

whom he has favored as one does a wound,

Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

grace is the great gift. So to be forgiven is only half the gift. The other half is that we also can forgive, restore, and liberate, and therefore we can feel the will of God enacted through us, which is the great restoration of ourselves to ourselves.

And it makes the point that, in Scripture, the one sufficient reason for the forgiveness of debt is simply the existence of debt.

How do you tell a scribe from a prophet, which is what he clearly takes himself to be? The prophets love the people they chastise,

I noted that Abraham himself had been sent into the wilderness, told to leave his father’s house also, that this was the narrative of all generations, and that it is only by the grace of God that we are made instruments of His providence and participants in a fatherhood that is always ultimately His.