God simply told us to think of Jesus as Immanuel, which means 'God with us.' How amazing that one of the main ways God wants us to think about the person of Jesus is as 'a sharing, an embrace of life by Life, a total identification of God with the object of his love.

We must make decisions as if they affect those we've not even met because we realize they do. We must live respective of world family.

We can make our own plans and judge them by our narrow expectations, or we can experience life as the boundless reality of the One who created it.

We don't practice hospitality to point other people to ourselves, our church, or even our beliefs. We practice hospitality to point people toward the ultimate welcome that God gives every person through Christ.

Compassion doesn't arise from the belief that the evil in the world is somebody else's fault or that it is a result of poor choices a suffering person has made.

Praise be to God that hope is much more than how we feel on a given day. It exists outside of us; it is an entity in itself.

If we allow our American mindset of consumption to spill into our understanding of what a Christian is, we are in danger of living irrespective of world family.

We must work for the good and commit ourselves to postures of global selflessness, even if we can't figure out all the details surrounding the foreign dictators, food shortages, and fair trade. We're called to lean in, to work as hard as we can toward the good, and then trust in God who says, 'The way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.' We're called to be witnesses of how God is at play in the world.

May we be faithful to observe our own lives, be humble enough to admit our sins, and resilient enough to let God realign us toward his purposes.