The Christ who rescues does not wait for you to be clean. He comes to clean you. He does not need your strength. He brings his own.
When you remember your baptism, you're not recalling a ritual. You're standing under a current of divine action that has not ceased to flow since the moment those baptismal waters hit your skin.
“The fear of the Lord” is our heart’s awakening to and recognition of God’s outrageous goodness.

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The kind of peace Jesus points to can't be achieved with words.
A twelve-year-old girl stomped out of the room and slammed her bedroom door. Her two parents sat at the table completely befuddled. They had been trying to lead her to grace, to forgiveness, to a remembering that she was loved.
Asking whether one's beliefs are the right ones is terrifying.
Moms, your worth is not determined by what present you get on Mother’s Day. Everything that is true about you was said on the cross thousands of years ago.
In divorce God married me to the cross. I didn’t want it; indeed, I hated it. But upon my shoulders God laid it. The ring of nails. The veil of darkness. The kiss of death. When we are stripped of all the good we think we are and have, we come face to face with the evil within. We fight and wrestle and gasp and die and become nothing.
On Sunday mornings, when I confess my sins, I say that “I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them.” But those adverbs are like two accusing fingers pointed at my less-than-heartily-sorry, less-than-sincerely-repentant heart.
Mark Twain would have been proud of me. He once quipped that the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you figure out why. Not only had I figured out why I came into this world; my answer defined me.
The Son that He is sending into this world will need more than a mother; He needs a father.
One of the sad truths I realized about myself long ago is that I do nothing from completely spic-and-span motives. I mean nothing. When I hear someone say that they’re “utterly sincere” or they’re doing something “from pure motives,” I smell a lie.
We usually understand vocation in a very narrow sense; it’s your job, your “calling.” Vocation, however, is not so much what you do for a living but what Christ does through you for the living. It’s a 24/7 calling, not a 9 to 5 occupation.
My daughter’s honest, pointed question of “Why?” not only desired an answer; it deserved and demanded the “dreadful beauty” of an honest response.
My husband, Phil, and I just celebrated our 40th anniversary. Forty years ago he pledged to love and care for me. Forty years ago I pledged the same things. Forty years.