“What Jesus slips through is precisely what you and I get caught in, from the earliest moments of our lives. We accept the hometown terms for what matters. And we begin constructing selves we think will make the hometown people proud.”
“A revelation without warning, an insight out of nowhere, a brief glimpse of understanding, that feeling when something searched for clicks suddenly into place.”
“Maybe the things we like are actually the essential stuff of meaningful interactions with other people and the world around us. And maybe they matter, at least in part, because as much as every single human being needs to be loved, it may be impossible to know we are loved if we don’t believe we are liked.”
Robert Capon wrote, “Left-handed power is governed by the more intuitive, open, and imaginative right side of the brain. It can look to the world like weakness, intervention that seems to be nonintervention.” It is the power of paradox. It is the power of humility. It is the power that changes hearts.
“The way Jesus and these magi resist Herod is not to build up enough good guy power to make the king’s knees go weak. They resist him by refusing to be driven by what drives him. The magi hear Herod out. And then they continue on their way toward Jesus, changing course only when God leads them home by another road.”