The Very Heart of God

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But this story of ultimate reconciliation is not just a stack of Bible verses. It is a key theme of the whole Bible, and it is essential to how we relate to God. We connect to God and love God because God first loves us. God is not a punisher; God is a healer. We fail, but God’s steadfast love “endures forever” – Psalms 136 repeats this truth twenty-six times! The redundant message doesn’t make for the most subtle poetry, but some truths need to be drilled into thick skulls. Despite the way that Christian history shows how we are experts at missing the point, those who know God best have always known that at the very heart of God is unfailing love.

— Brian Recker, Hell Bent, p. 104-105

Photo: Mont Saint-Michel, June 17, 2026

The Opposite of Faith

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Please remember that certainty – not doubt – is the opposite of faith. The insistence on certainty reveals a need for control, not a need for love or understanding. Historians agree that much violence in human history has been religiously based, the predictable collision of two absolutely certain or dogmatic worldviews. Those views can be relied on to give us certitudes about our superiority, our judgments, and our actions, and they are also our most reliable justifications for scapegoating others. In light of such thinking, punishment becomes a moral mandate. If we are the loved ones and the “best,” then the ever-present other has to be punished or eliminated. These are the obstacles to love that must be shaved away in all of us.

— Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things, p. 154

Photo: Cliffs of Étretat, June 23, 2026

The Good News

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In story after story, Jesus reveals all the ways we’ve misunderstood and misrepresented God. This is the good news: God loves us and is here to rescue us, not to condemn us. Cast away the old visions of bearded Zeus, of paternalistic punishers, of Bible verses as weapons, of faraway fear coming home to roost, of switches and beatings described as love. Such things aren’t love. They never were.

The love of God isn’t a far-off destination we are striving to arrive at. Nor is it a prize that will be given to us only if we earn it. It’s not for the winners or the ones with answered prayers. It’s not just for the ones clutching their pearls over you. It’s not just for one denomination or church or religion. Now, we are all loved now.

— Sarah Bessey, Field Notes for the Wilderness, p. 62.

Photo: Zweibrücken Rose Garden, Germany, June 18, 2024.

God Persists in Love.

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Since God persists in love, no matter how dark things get, God is not preoccupied nor enfeebled by our “sin.” This is true because God doesn’t see sin but wholeness. God sees right through it. A homie texted me, sending a YouTube homily by a bishop who spoke of sin and the need for a “contrite heart.” This gave the homie a passageway to deem himself really, “a worthless piece of shit.” I texted back only this: “God doesn’t see sin. God sees son.” The relief in his next text was palpable. His notion of sin was self-estranging. He wanted to accept that he was “son” but didn’t know how to dare to believe it.

— Gregory Boyle, Forgive Everyone Everything, p. 26

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 3, 2026

To Win Us Over

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Jesus did not die in order to win God’s love for us, but to win us over with God’s love. God’s love went to the limit for us, dove into the depths of the human condition, suffered the consequences of our sin by dying a terrible death as an innocent man. And in the midst of that suffering love, Jesus revealed the greatest love of all — forgiving his enemies and praying to God to do the same. Through the incarnation, God took on human flesh and gave human flesh the life of God.

— Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 147

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 16, 2026

Power to Love

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Just as Middle-earth could not be saved, only enslaved, by the Ring of Power, so Christianity cannot save the world by political power; it can only be corrupted by it. Jesus Christ crucified is the everlasting indictment on those who forsake the way of the cross to reach for the ring of political power. The power we are promised by our Lord is the power of the Holy Spirit – the power to love, forgive, and heal. If we try to wield the Ring of Power (or Caesar’s sword), it will only corrupt us.

— Brian Zahnd, The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 97

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 16, 2026

Too Busy Loving Us

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Part of the quest is to be freed from everything that is not God. Eckhart thought we should rid ourselves of the irrelevant stuff, the tired views of God and religious language that block the pores of our soul. Richard Rohr says that your image of God creates you. Our God is self-effacing. We aren’t. This may be one of the reasons why we have such a hard time connecting to the God of love. God is not needy. We are. God does not long to be liked. We do. God is never fishing for a compliment. That’s our thing. Homies are endlessly insisting, for example, that everything happens for a reason. God is behind every reasonableness and everything unreasonable. When the opportunity affords itself, I will tell homies that God is too busy loving them to have any time left for orchestration. Sometimes we are saddled with an image of God that does not create us in God’s image.

— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 17

Photo: Burnside Farms, Nokesville, Virginia, April 7, 2026

God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us

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God is not so small-minded or vindictive as to make people in order to just . . . hate them. I mean, look at the sheer multitude of galaxies in the universe. The membranes of butterfly wings. The way a toddler’s teeth make the most crooked and sublime smile when they laugh. The dreamer-upper of these things isn’t an asshole. I just don’t buy it. The Bible doesn’t sell it, either; while full of challenging and complex stories that do dip into the lament and wrath of God, scripture on the whole has an undercurrent and over-arc of God’s delight in God’s people.

— Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail, God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us, p. xii-xiv

Photo: Goslings, South Riding, Virginia, May 8, 2026