Our kids were God's kids first... We tend to forget this fact, regarding our children as "our" children, as though we have the final say in their health and welfare. We don't. All people are God's people, including the small people who sit at our tables.

Forgiveness is not saying that the one who hurt you was right. Forgiveness is stating that God is faithful and he will do what is right.

We have the freedom to pray and the freedom to love the God of our heart. And we have been forgiven by the only one who could condemn us. We are truly free.

Someday I want to go back and maybe write another book on those seven sayings. I just think they are kind of like a table of contents to the Christian hope. They invite us to go into all the aspects of the heart of Jesus. Everything about them from the drama, the setting, the passion around them - I think the seven sayings of the cross are powerful.

Do you believe that God is near? He wants you to. He wants you to know that He is in the midst of your world. Wherever you are as you read these words, He is present.

God, the Master Weaver. He stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the velvet strings, the pains with the pleasures. Nothing escapes his reach.

Just as your earthly house is a place of refuge, so God's house is a place of peace.

We (Christians) are always in the presence of God. There is never a non-sacred moment! His presence never diminishes. Our awareness of His presence may falter, but the reality of His presence never changes.

Jesus isn't a God who stayed on the mountaintop - he's a Savior who came down and lived and worked with the people.