Traveling Light Relay

However much we may wish it otherwise, when we receive the Spirit at conversion, divine perfection does not set in, but divine “infection” does! We have been invaded by the living God himself, in the person of his Spirit, whose goal is to infect us thoroughly with God’s own likeness.
— Gordon D. Fee, from
God’s Empowering Presence

But the decision to become human, and to go all the way along the road of obedience, obedience to the divine plan of salvation, yes, all the way to the cross — this decision was not a decision to stop being divine. It was a decision about what it really means to be divine. Jesus, the eternal son of God, the one who became human in and as Jesus of Nazareth, regarded his equality with God as committing him to the course he took: of becoming human, of becoming Israel’s anointed representative, of dying under the weight of the world’s evil. This is what it meant to be equal with God. As you look at the incarnate son of God dying on the cross the most powerful thought you should think is: this is the true meaning of who God is. He is the God of self-giving love. And his progression through incarnation to death must be seen, not as something which required him as it were to stop being God for a while, but as the perfect self-expression of the true God.
— Tom Wright, from
Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters

Gratitude… is a response to grace. The compassionate life is a grateful life, and actions born out of gratefulness are not compulsive but free, not somber but joyful, not fanatical but liberating.
— Henri Nouwen