Jesus Came To Raise The Dead. He

Why Do We Marry, Why Take Friends And Lovers? Why Give Ourselves To Music, Painting, Chemistry Or Cooking? Out Of Simple Delight In The Resident Goodness Of Creation, Of Course; But Out Of More Than That, Too. Half Earth's Gorgeousness Lies Hidden In The Glimpsed City It Longs To Become.

If God Seems To Be In No Hurry To Make The Problem Of Evil Go Away, Maybe We Shouldn't Be, Either. Maybe Our Compulsion To Wash God's Hands For Him Is A Service He Doesn't Appreciate. Maybe - All Theodicies And Nearly All Theologians To The Contrary - Evil Is Where We Meet God. Maybe He Isn't Bothered By Showing Up Dirty For His Dates With Creation. Maybe - Just Maybe - If We Ever Solved The Problem, We'd Have Talked Ourselves Out Of A Lover.

For All Its Rooted Loveliness, The World Has No Continuing City Here; It Is An Outlandish Place, A Foreign Home, A Session In Via To A Better Version Of Itself-and It Is Our Glory To See It So And To Thirst Until Jerusalem Comes Home At Last. We Were Given Appetites, Not To Consume The World And Forget It, But To Taste Its Goodness And Hunger To Make It Great.

But All The While, There Was One Thing We Most Needed Even From The Start, And Certainly Will Need From Here On Out Into The New Jerusalem: The Ability To Take Our Freedom Seriously And Act On It, To Live Not In Fear Of Mistakes But In The Knowledge That No Mistake Can Hold A Candle To The Love That Draws Us Home. My Repentance, Accordingly, Is Not So Much For My Failings But For The Two-bit Attitude Toward Them By Which I Made Them More Sovereign Than Grace. Grace - The Imperative To Hear The Music, Not Just Listen For Errors - Makes All Infirmities Occasions Of Glory.

Even To This Day, Grace Remains Hard To Swallow. Religiosity And Moralism Go Down Easier Than Free Forgiveness.