I incessantly wallow in the ‘muck and mire’ of the terrible messes that I have made. And when I realize that God has long ago removed all the ‘muck and mire,’ I suddenly understand that the only wallowing that’s going on is in my head.

When we say it is the whole story, the cross tells us that death is only half the story. And it is by far the least compelling half.

In the end, if we don't have God we don't have anything other than an end.

Despite my intellectual attempts to grasp it, I remain confounded beyond all repair to understand how God believes in us enough to choose us as the vehicles by which to destroy the darkness in the world that we, of our own accord brought into it. And while I may never understand all of it, it is my hope that I love God with enough passion and that I hate the darkness with enough ferocity to stand up and be that vehicle.

Shame is embarrassment multiplied against itself until it dies under it’s own weight and we with it. Forgiveness is freedom multiplied against the Cross until it flies under it’s own liberation and we with it.

Maybe I don’t have enough beginnings in my life because I fought against the endings that were about to birth those beginnings.

Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life.

Sooner or later I will realize that the very things I most desperately need are the very things I am unable to give myself. Therefore, I will either be left despising the fact that I am doomed to live out a life that is perpetually empty, or I will realize that an empty tomb is the single thing that will eternally fill me.

What would behoove me to instantly declare God not to be God unless He followed my script in some tediously exacting manner? I must confess that I am less likely to believe that it’s a matter of some narcissistic demand that I freely pen my own script. Rather, I think it’s fear that I’m too inadequate to follow God’s.