“Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.”

How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!

We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.

Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.

Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil Our hope is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.

The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.’ ‘What are you complaining about?’ said God. ‘They won’t let Me in either.

God is loving us – you and me – this moment, just as we are and not as we should be.

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.

You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.

To lend each other a hand when we’re falling, perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.

Letting ourselves be loved by God is more important than loving God.

To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.

I have been seized by the power of a great affection.

The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: We are all, equally, privileged but unentitled beggars at the door of God’s mercy!

We even refuse to be our true self with God- and then wonder why we lack intimacy with him.

The gospel declares that no matter how dutiful or prayerful we are, we can’t save ourselves. What Jesus did was sufficient.

Knowledge without devotion to God produces hatred.

Martyrdom does not consist only in dying for one’s faith. Martyrdom also consists in serving God with love and purity of heart every day of one’s life.

I trust two people, myself and the other is not you, its God.

As close as you are to God, so close is God to you.

A judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution.

I talk to Allah, I pray to him.

The Godfather’ was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.

I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.