Christ Plays in Ten Thousand places

Here are some quotes from one of my favorite authors from a book I'm reading by him right now, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.  The idea of the title is that of all the "games" that Man likes to participate in, the reality is, there is only one game going in God's eyes, the game of salvation, and Christ plays every position in a thousand ways.

Here are some quotes that most recently started my wheels turning:

"Salvation is God's work: Jesus saves.  In competence may be the essential qualification, lest we impatiently and presumptuously take over the business and start managing a vast and intricate economy that we have no way of comprehending.  To be sure, we get intimations; we are in touch with stories that reveal God's salvation work at certain moments in history to which we have access.  We know enough to get in on the life of salvation personally by repenting and believing and following Jesus, the architect and pioneer of salvation.  But when all is said and done, we don't know very much.  Most of what goes on in salvation is beyond us; we live a mystery.  We make our way through life in a "cloud of unknowing".  p. 152

"The Wonder at the Sea (the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites) is meant to be unederstood as miracle without qualification.  It was not even qualified by Israel's faith.  Brevard Childs makes the trenchant observation that 'Israel failed to believe right up to the moment of her deliverance.'  At the very outset we are meant to understand taht salvation is not limited by conditions, by impossibilities, by conventions.  The Wonder at the Sea establishes it as fundamental that salvation consists in what God does; it is not a human project.  We see and fear and believe (14:31) and that's it.  This is difficult to digest, for we grow up with and are surrounded with 'salvation projects' on all fronts (many of them in churches) that insist that what we do, how we get involved, is critical to their success.  When waws the last time that we heard one of our pastors or evangelists or politicians tell us, 'You have only to keep still'?  But that is what we are told here.  This is as indisputable and as clear as our story teller can make it: Our showcase salvation story anchors 'save' in the sheer, unqualified miracle of the Wonder at the Sea.  Only God did this and only God could do it.'  p.172

"[Resurrection] happens, we do not make it happen.  The more we get involved in what God is doing, the less we find ourselves running things; the more we participate in God's work s revealed in Jesus, the more is done to us and the more is done through us.  The more we practice resurrection the less we are on our own or by ourselves, for we find that this resurrection that is so intensely and relationally personal in Father, Son, and Spirit at the same time plunges us into relationships with brothers and sisters we never knew we had: we are in community whether we like it or not.  We do not choose to be in this community; by virtue of the resurrection of Jesus, this is the company we keep."  p.231