Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

But when Caitlin said that Jesus died for our sins, including that one, I was reminded again that there is nothing we have done that God cannot redeem. Small betrayals, large infractions, minor offenses. All of it.

Christ comes to us in the needs of the poor and hungry, needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of God might be known.

It’s weird, but of all the characters in the Gospels who encounter Jesus, the ones who most reliably know who he is are not the religious authorities or even Jesus’s own disciples. They are the demons. The demons always recognize Jesus’s authority. And the demons are afraid.

This is why being loved, really loved, can sting a little, reminding us of all the times we have loved poorly or not at all, all the ways in which we have done things that make us feel unworthy of real love.

I wonder if God is like the sun in that way and is the reason Moses could not look at God, because we need a protective barrier. We need God for light and warmth, but we also need some protection from God — not because God is an angry bastard, as some would have us believe, but because we would cripple under God’s truth, unfiltered.