Imagine her thankfulness when she sees that there’s someone who loves her enough to sacrifice everything to go find her and bring her home.

One thing a little time away has made clear to this sinner is that I need you if the old patterns are to be broken in me. I need a community of people trying to listen to Jesus and to live by the light of his love.

What if we admitted we're all afraid? It takes real courage to do this. It's a radical move, which is why fear and not hate is the opposite of love.

“Get it straight, before the voice comes to your house and says, ‘you fool, tonight.’”

We pray in order to be, to be in the presence of God, being transformed into the likeness of Christ, and that the miracle we get from prayer is God’s presence and God’s hearing us, not a particular outcome. And though that understanding lives somewhere in my heart and in my soul and a big place in my mind, the truth is that prayer remains a mystery for me.

The kingdom of God is real.

What if we choose this story? What if we tell this story to ourselves and to everyone we meet on the way, and to every house we enter, and at every meal we eat? What could it look like to live inside that story, to imagine a world where the harvest is plentiful, where we all get to be there, where the wolves and the lambs lie down together?

Real freedom will cost you your illusions. But it will give you your name, your story, your voice, your joy. Your freedom. And it will be loud, and bright, and contagious.

My prayer for us and for the church is that we will fight with all our might and with as little fear as possible any effort, message, or policy that attempts to restrict or confine the love of God. The hope of the world may depend upon it.

The challenge of believing in the Trinity is not figuring out the formula; the challenge of believing in the Trinity is living a life that reflects our beautiful understanding of God as more than we can grasp or imagine.

Pentecost doesn’t reverse the effects of Babel so much as it breaks open our imagination. Opens us to the possibility of connection and reconciliation even in a world of difference and diversity.