Winning Us with Love

Atonement, Forgiveness, God, Grace, Jesus, Love 0

These metaphors do not mean that he literally took on our sin or our infirmities as a mysterious imputation or had our punishmet transferred to his person and, consequently, by his suffering satisfied the justice of God. That kind of penal suffering would only satisfy the very worst injustice. And think about it. If Jesus did take on the punishment for our sin, why would anyone need to suffer in an eternal hell? According to the penal and satisfaction theories, Jesus suffered for all humanity. He paid the price, satisfied the debt, and said “it is finished.” So it would be a grave injustice if God required two punishments for sin – one paid by Jesus and one paid by eternal suffering. Instead, Jesus took upon himself our sinning enmity by bearing all the abuse we handed ut to him. He was painfully burdened by our fallen and broken condition, and he agonized with us in the most profound way possible – he suffered on account of our sin. Jesus knows how to treat his enemies – he suffers with them (us) as a friend. He suffers all our wickedness in order to win us with his love.

— Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 136

Photo: Sunrise in South Riding, Virginia, March 10, 2026

Relentless Love

God, Grace, Love, Universalism 0

Jesus has no doubt about the salvific efficacy of the cross. Ultimately it will drag all people to himself. Does this imply that salvation is forced upon us through overpowering coercion? No, I don’t think so. Saving grace can always be resisted by a rebellious will. Rather, I think this has to do with the utter relentlessness of the divine love seen in Christ upon the cross. The gravity of grace is always pulling upon us. At any given mment we can resist the love of God, but, as Psalm 136 says so relentlessly – twenty-six consecutive times – “His steadfast love endures forever.”

From the cross of Christ there emanates a tractor beam of steadfast love that pulls upon all people. At any given moment any given person can resist it, but how long can a love that endures forever be resisted?

— Brian Zahnd, Wood Between the Worlds, p. 91

Photo: Cherry blossoms, South Riding, Virginia, March 28, 2025

Believing in Love

Acceptance, Core Value, God, Love 0

I don’t think I’m at death’s door, but I find myself assessing things I believe as I inch toward that door. I believe the following things:

  1. God is in the loving.
  2. God IS inclusion.
  3. Demonizing is always untruth
  4. We belong to each other.
  5. Separation is an illusion.
  6. Tenderness is the highest form of spiritual maturity.
  7. “Kindness is the only non-delusional response to everything” (George Saunders).
  8. Love your neighbor as you love your child.
  9. We are all unshakably good.
  10. A community of cherished belonging is God’s dream come true.

For what it’s worth, this book just wants to lure us to embracing God’s heart and punto de vista. It proposes a mystical view that perhaps can lift us above those things that keep us apart. Nobody VS. Anybody. God’s dream come true.

— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 12

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026

God Didn’t Make Me to Hate Me.

Acceptance, Delight, God, Joy, Love 0

So how do we melt away the fear?

I believe it begins here: by looking at the heavens, and looking at the dandelion in the cracks, and looking at scripture, and looking at God, and trying an older and wilder way of trust. It begins by saying: God did not make me to hate me; God made me to love me. God made me out of desire. God made me out of joy.

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

Photo: Shadows of tree branches on frozen lake, South Riding, Virginia, January 30, 2026

We’re Not Merely Tolerated.

Acceptance, God, Love 0

God’s love results in invitation, welcome, and unification – a shared Life – where disgust would allow only for violent rejection. All of that might sound like condescension, and certainly there is a robust Christian tradition encouraging us to embrace humility and to understand ourselves as utterly dependent on God’s grace, but in fact there is nothing of tolerance or condescension in it at all. When we operate out of Love, the whole higher/lower distinction dissolves and disgust is destroyed, killed, and reborn as its own opposite: the longing for unity. God will not tolerate union and shared life with Their creation for even a single moment because tolerance is far too weak to bridge the gap. God desires, embraces, died for, and delights in, union and a shared Life with Creation. We are not tolerated by the Divine, we are celebrated. Love is the only force in existence which could possibly bridge the infinite Gap between creation and Creator, but Love will have nothing of gaps at all; what Love wants is unity with the Beloved. When Love acts, the gap is not bridged but erased. The father in the parable of the prodigal son does not condescend to or tolerate his son; the Father runs to him, embraces him, kisses him, and throws a party. Lovers delight in their union.

— Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. 175-176

Photo: Shadows of tree branches on snow, February 14, 2026

My Wild Mediocrity

Core Value, God, Life, Love 0

God, give me satisfaction in the trying.
Give me joy in the never-quite-there.
Grant me peace in my unsettled heart
for my wild mediocrity.
Help me smile back
at the truth that no one,
not one, knows perfection but you.
And you already looked at this
messy creation
at the beginning of time
and pronounced it pretty darn good.

— Kate Bowler, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! p. 79

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026

Our Gifts of Love

Creativity, Love 0

It’s love that propels us to create, not cynicism.

After many years of wrestling with my own frustrations, I have concluded that our gifts are just that, they are gifts. We might possess the power to postpone their use, try and hide from them, but I suspect we only manage to shade ourselves for a time from the intensity of our passions. This love of ours still shines brightly all around, and waits for us with the focused attention of a beloved dog. When we finally step out from under the protection of our denial, our loves will leap and bark and joyously circle us, too long neglected, racing forward and dashing back to us, hurrying us along on our illuminated path.

— Margaret Dulaney, To Hear the Forest Sing, p. 47

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 28, 2026

Worth Embracing

Acceptance, Compassion, Love 0

I’m not asking you to embrace a violent white supremacist or to place yourself in the path of physical harm or to do anything that causes you emotional injury. But generally speaking, if our faith is going to overcome the ugliness around us, we’re all going to have to figure out how to do the difficult work of loving people we dislike. We’re going to have to stop creating false stories about people from a safe distance and get truer ones. We’re going to have to find a way to offer an open hand instead of a clenched fist. We’re going to need to slow down enough and get close enough to our supposed enemies that we can look in the whites of their eyes and find the goodness residing behind them. It may be buried in jagged layers of fear and grief and hopelessness – but it is almost always there. I don’t like to think about the humanity of people when they are acting inhumanely and find ironically that I have the greatest difficulty manufacturing compassion for people who seem to lack compassion, mostly because I don’t want them to get away with something. I don’t want to risk giving tacit consent to the terrible things they do, to the wounds they inflict, to the violence they manufacture – and the simplest way to do this seems to be to despise them. Hating people is always going to be the easier and more expedient path than loving them, because loving them means seeing them fully, hearing their story, stepping into their skin and shoes as best we can, and finding something worth embracing.

— John Pavlovitz, Worth Fighting For, p. 44-45.

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 17, 2026