Prayer Gets Us In On What God

When We Sin And Mess Up Our Lives, We Find That God Doesn't Go Off And Leave Us- He Enters Into Our Trouble And Saves Us.

This Kingdom Of God Life Is Not A Matter Of Waking Up Each Morning With A List Of Chores Or An Agenda To Be Tended To, Left On Our Bedside Table By The Holy Spirit For Us While We Slept. We Wake Up Already Immersed In A Large Story Of Creation And Covenant, Of Israel And Jesus, The Story Of Jesus And The Stories That Jesus Told. We Let Ourselves Be Formed By These Formative Stories, And Especially As We Listen To The Stories That Jesus Tells, Get A Feel For The Way He Does It, The Way He Talks, The Way He Treats People, The Jesus Way.

I Don't Want To End Up A Bureaucrat In The Time-management Business For God Or A Librarian Cataloguing Timeless Truths. Salvation Is Kicking In The Womb Of Creation Right Now, Any Time Now. Pay Attention.

It's Essential For Us To Develop An Imagination That Is Participatory. Art Is The Primary Way In Which This Happens. It's The Primary Way In Which We Become What We See Or Hear.

Pity Is One Of The Noblest Emotions Available To Human Beings; Self-pity Is Possibly The Most Ignoble . . . . [it] Is An Incapacity, A Crippling Emotional Disease That Severely Distorts Our Perception Of Reality . . . A Narcotic That Leaves Its Addicts Wasted And Derelict.