1. If we just say to God, “We don’t get it, please explain,” he will. He will send us a preacher to point us to his words for more clarification.
  2. The needs of the people remain the same, but now the people are you and me. We still sin, and that sin causes so many challenges in our lives.
  3. Human history, our history, is the story of two Adams with two very different encounters with the devil.
  4. 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.
  5. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  6. 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.
  7. As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
  8. Ash Wednesday's purpose is not to motivate our resolve to redouble our efforts to do better.
  9. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  10. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  11. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  12. 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).