It’s taken me a few hundred read-throughs of this Gospel passage to finally understand a painful truth: I am Gestas, “the bad thief.”

As my husband and I drove our firstborn child home from the hospital, I sat alongside my daughter in the backseat. Terrified, exhausted, exhilarated and confused.

It matters why you do something, not just how you do it. Are we allowing our worship to transform us, or are we only concerned with transforming our worship?

I imagine the hand of God writing me into existence — she lived, she died — using for ink the very dirt that fills my grave.

The Pharisee did the right thing sometimes. He fasted. He tithed. But he gazed so long at his own holiness that he became blinded by it.

In the same way that a judge cannot go looking for conflicts to mediate, God will not force his way into our problems.

Your faith has saved you. These are the words I pray I will hear when my heart stops beating, when the last breath has left my lungs.

It’s easy to give your kid what he’s asking for. It’s hard to give him what he wants.