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

You exist because God made you, and God made you because he loves you.

You and I are made by God and for God. Our home is in God. We are beloved. We are dependent. We need God, every second of every day, if we are going to be happy or good, much less both. Very little is worth knowing more than this.

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

God does what only God can do: make a way out of no way, something from nothing, life from death.

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.

In everything that makes a human community human, Israel’s election as God’s people should shine in their lives like neon lights.

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

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