If the church is to flourish, we cannot build our religious lives around a gospel of fear, or a gospel of reward for our meanness.

The Christian faith is not about being afraid of God. Fear may get us to submit but fear always leads to anger and resentment and bitterness. We must learn that grace is life’s most important gift. Above all else, the church must become a reservoir of grace…

The word is this: the ultimate measure of our lives, for clergy and laity alike, will not be how much we have gained, but how much we have given.

The measure will not be how far we have run or how high we have climbed, not how many sermons we have preached or even how long we have lived.

The ultimate measure will be how deeply we have loved.

from Centering Our Souls