Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry

But if we unclench our fists, if we let go of our lives, if we confess that we are not our own, that we need and depend on God for life and for every other good thing—then, Jesus says, we will keep our lives, not only in this world but in the world to come.

The Song says that love is stronger than death. Indeed it is. The gospel of Jesus is one long expansion of this simple claim. Death cannot defeat true love. True love is God’s love for God’s people. No matter the slings and arrows of this life, no matter our pain or sorrow in this world, nothing—nothing, not in heaven or on earth—can separate the p

In everything that makes a human community human, Israel’s election as God’s people should shine in their lives like neon lights.

Israel is the moon to God’s sun, reflecting the divine light to a world blanketed in darkness.

You and I are made by God and for God. Our home is in God. We are beloved. We are dependent. We need God, every second of every day, if we are going to be happy or good, much less both. Very little is worth knowing more than this.

Holiness is the number one job description for Abraham’s children. The people of God must be holy, as the God whose people they are is holy. If they’re not holy, then what makes them different from any other people? To be holy is to be set apart. It means to be other, different, distinct, unlike the rest. God is holy because there is no one and not

God, we may say, sings us into being. He breathes forth a poem, and the poem is us: galaxies, planets, molecules, continents, animals, people. It is a beautiful poem, a glorious song, and somehow we are alive and in the middle of it.

Imagine God, if the comparison is not too much of a reach, as a bottle of champagne. What happens when you shake it up and pop off the cork? It explodes! It shoots out and up and everywhere. It runs over every which way. This is what creation is like. God is so full, so rich, so much that he simply runs over with being—and out come quarks and quack

We have learned that God is love and God is faithful. Now we see that God is mighty to save, for he is the great Liberator and Deliverer. Israel knows him as Savior and Rescuer, the breaker of chains who responds to the suffering of his people. The loving and faithful God hates injustice and smashes the bonds of servitude. He frees.