"…our understanding of what it means to love and to bless has become severely constricted in our sentimental age. We think that blessings should always feel good and that love is mostly about being nice. Jesus, on the other hand, specifically says that blessings sometimes feel like abject poverty, like grief, like starving to death, like being persecuted. And he showed his love for us by enduring the excruciating pain and abandonment of crucifixion."