1. Walking in the light doesn't entail a spotless moral record but rather an honest appraisal of who we are.
  2. Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.
  3. Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
  4. In the place of God, Marx sets the material, autonomous, self-creating man.
  5. Because of Jesus, God always hears our prayers, and he always responds to them in love–regardless of the quality or quantity of the one speaking them.
  6. Our only hope in life and death is that God loves sinners, who fail and forget constantly, with a love that is just as constant.
  7. If you want something empty, the tomb is the way to go. The point of the manger is that Jesus was in it. The point of the cross is that Jesus was on it.
  8. Your loving Lord is not oblivious to your pain and sadness.
  9. Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so we, through the working of the Holy Spirit, recognize our Lord in the Word and Sacraments.
  10. Darkness is not your only friend. Jesus loves you, and he will be with you.
  11. God’s gifts, in turn, conform our minds to the mind of Christ, and catechize our imagination in the image of God’s Son.
  12. This book is not in your hands so that we can simply commiserate with each other’s difficulties. It is meant to pierce your sin-darkened night with the light of God’s Word.