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It is always the transformation of the smallest part that leads to the transformation of the whole. 
We groan and cry out in this painful life experience together. 
Who can stand before this cosmically-sized love without being completely transformed?
Either way, you will ultimately face then refiner’s fire.
The problem is that Hell is never once mentioned in the Bible.
The word wrath isn’t an unloading of God’s fury and rage on the unrepentant.
There is a crushing agony to experiencing so much stillness and peace and serenity, but then walking back into so much antipathy, hatred, and division. 
It is a very, very bizarre phenomenon. Despite clear and overwhelming evidence that Jesus wants his followers to be peacemakers, to love our enemies, and to not repay evil with evil, the vast majority of Christians in the United States are pro-capital punishment and pro-war.
For even in the face of death, our own blood will cry out and give testimony.
Will we ever find joy? Will love ever prevail instead of hate and violence? Will the longings of hope ever be realized into something?
If we aren’t living like Christ in the present, when times are relatively good, then we will never live like Christ when things get difficult.
One Sunday we showed up at our rented church building. Someone had spray painted a Nazi swastika on the front of the building.
There is a beautiful word, an elegant descriptor, that has been maligned, tarnished, lampooned, distorted, and completely misunderstood.
There are so many positions, angles, self-interested ideologies, and half-truths surrounding us that we are not sure what truth is anymore.
I can courageously face another day, another week, another year because I have a family ready to receive me and shower me with love and acceptance.
The central purpose, the grand narrative, the over-arching achievement of God is to bring heaven and earth back together as one.
The truth of God that cuts through every liberal and conservative position is God's profound love of all life.
Not only can I not kill my enemy or have someone do it on my behalf or with my support, I can not even hate my enemy, or avenge the wrong he has done to me.
Our time would be better spent discussing how to demonstrate a greater love to the Muslims or how we can better serve them with our actions.
When did we get so thin-skinned and so easily offended by everything that people say or do to us as Christians?
When a loved-one in your life passes unexpectedly, everything else in the world seems to completely stop and to have very little significance.
the Incarnation…the word becoming flesh…the logos becoming flesh…the Good News of Great Joy is not on the defensive. It is on the offensive march destroying every stronghold and every work of Satan through the word, the logos, becoming flesh in Jesus Christ and through the logos becoming flesh in our own lives.
If our understanding of worship has been so twisted and misunderstood in the church, is it possible that our understanding of praise could be just as twisted and misunderstood? Is it possible that we have reduced our praise to a Sunday sing-a-long? Is it possible that our praise has centered on what we get out of it rather than what God is doing through it?
If freedom is of God, would God have us kill to maintain it?
Those who follow the way of Jesus no longer have allegiance to any other governments, systems, or political party.
Ideas like loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, giving your jacket and your shirt have NEVER made sense from a human perspective.