We come to know and trust God’s love more deeply through our own crosses, the things that make us feel we cannot go on, the things that make us tired—the

The afflicted reveal to us our true state. We meet Jesus in his “distressing disguise,” and in him we see true humanity.

But if we let it, our physical vulnerability can show us who we are and teach us to cry out to God

We can even use spirituality in the same way, marketing God or the spiritual life as the path of self-fulfillment and triumph, not the way of a cross.

We are not the primary protagonist of the earth—or even of our own lives. Each night the revolution of planets, the activity of angels, and the work of God in the world goes on just fine without us. For the Christian, sleep is an embodied way to confess our trust that the work of God does not depend on us.

that the way of glory is discovered through, and only through, the cross.

work itself is often a place of futility, where we bump up against the wrecked state of the world.

The biography of Jesus continues through us, through the church, even through—perhaps especially through—our adversity.

All of human life, our suffering and joy, our ordinary heartbreak and laughter, every moment of our lives, has meaning because our end is to discover ourselves to be in Christ, eternally beloved of God.