Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry

You’ll find reference to these all over the New Testament, on the lips of Jesus and the apostles. So much so that C. S. Lewis calls the New Testament but “a tissue of quotations” from the Old Testament. Reading the latter, you realize “how constantly Our Lord repeated, reinforced, continued, refined, and sublimated” what came before him, and “how v

Israel is the moon to God’s sun, reflecting the divine light to a world blanketed in darkness.

in the first century, the writings we now call the Old Testament were simply Scripture for Israel, and thus for Jesus and the apostles. The first generation of the church had no inkling of a New Testament, much less of a need for one. They had the Law of Moses; they had prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; they had the psalms of King David

Holiness is the number one job description for Abraham’s children. The people of God must be holy, as the God whose people they are is holy. If they’re not holy, then what makes them different from any other people? To be holy is to be set apart. It means to be other, different, distinct, unlike the rest. God is holy because there is no one and not

I described the role of a priest as standing between God and the people, representing each to the other. A prophet does this, too, but in terms of speech: what the people have to say to God and what God has to say to the people. When a priest stands in the gap, it isn’t about words. It’s about sin. Sin and sacrifice.

Sin is a turning away from God; it is missing the mark of giving God what God is due—namely, the whole of ourselves.

But if we unclench our fists, if we let go of our lives, if we confess that we are not our own, that we need and depend on God for life and for every other good thing—then, Jesus says, we will keep our lives, not only in this world but in the world to come.

Imagine God, if the comparison is not too much of a reach, as a bottle of champagne. What happens when you shake it up and pop off the cork? It explodes! It shoots out and up and everywhere. It runs over every which way. This is what creation is like. God is so full, so rich, so much that he simply runs over with being—and out come quarks and quack

I want you to catch a glimpse of why God called Abraham. He was starting a family. This family would be different from other families. It would be a family founded on knowing and loving God. With God at the head of this family, other families might take notice. They might peak over the fence, wondering what life was like inside the house. They migh