1. What we discover in O’Connor’s stories and Martin Luther’s theology is that God’s grace is elusive because the human heart is resistant to it.
  2. Unprompted, without any warning, for no reason at all, without any instigation say, "I love you." And that will wash over your parents like a beautiful absolution.
  3. This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
  4. As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
  5. Ash Wednesday's purpose is not to motivate our resolve to redouble our efforts to do better.
  6. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  7. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  8. The further up and further into the season of Epiphany we get, the bigger the grace of God in Christ is, the brighter the Light of Christ shines, and the more blessed we are in Jesus' epiphany for us.
  9. Repentance is meaningless unless we are willing to acknowledge who we are: sinners needing mercy.
  10. The good news of the Gospel is Jesus has come, and Jesus will come again.
  11. It is terribly easy to set up our theology as a buffer against the real coming of the Lord and its consequences.