Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People

Goff plots the direction of the book in the Prologue by telling of a community kitchen in San Francisco staffed by former street people serving an extremely needy and problematic population from urban housing projects. He praises the “brave men and women” who run the restaurant and deal with their clientele with “extravagant grace” (vii-viii).

After Goff and several friends show up to work in the kitchen, they discover a few minutes later that it has been robbed and vandalized. All their personal effects, including the laptop with Goff’s first draft of Everybody, Always, are gone. Starting the book over, he writes, gave him additional time to reflect on the topic of the need to love everybody, always, especially since, he notes: “It’s hard to believe Jesus loves the van thieves and all the difficult people we’ve met just the same as you and me” (ix).

As with the other chapters in the book, Goff begins Chapter 1 with a proverbial subtitle: “We don’t need to be who we used to be; God sees who we’re becoming—and we’re becoming love” (1). This chapter is a sermon on loving unlikeable, fear-inducing individuals. As an example, Goff relates the way he showed up at the airport for his flight home with no identification.