We pray in order to be, to be in the presence of God, being transformed into the likeness of Christ, and that the miracle we get from prayer is God’s presence and God’s hearing us, not a particular outcome. And though that understanding lives somewhere in my heart and in my soul and a big place in my mind,
The kingdom of God is real. What if we choose this story? What if we tell this story to ourselves and to everyone we meet on the way, and to every house we enter, and at every meal we eat? What could it look like to live inside that story, to imagine a world where the harvest is plentiful,
Real freedom will cost you your illusions. But it will give you your name, your story, your voice, your joy. Your freedom. And it will be loud, and bright, and contagious.
My prayer for us and for the church is that we will fight with all our might and with as little fear as possible any effort, message, or policy that attempts to restrict or confine the love of God. The hope of the world may depend upon it.
The challenge of believing in the Trinity is not figuring out the formula; the challenge of believing in the Trinity is living a life that reflects our beautiful understanding of God as more than we can grasp or imagine.
Pentecost doesn’t reverse the effects of Babel so much as it breaks open our imagination. Opens us to the possibility of connection and reconciliation even in a world of difference and diversity.
“About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” I wonder what would sustain me in that dark night? What stories or poems would emerge from my internal library? And if not in a jail cell, then in the other dark watches of illness or despair, or of the
So, for all the hardship and need we see and experience, let’s commit to being a community that tends to its joy and its curiosity. Which means we not only learn together and pray together and serve together, but that we also eat and drink together, sing and laugh together, rejoice in all the ways we can together.
For most of our history, we Christians have been re-drawing the lines between who’s in and who’s out, between whose beliefs are correct and whose are not. For one group, fundamentalists might be the problem; for another, it’s woke liberals. For yet another, it could be terrorists or immigrants or environmentalists, rich people or poor people, or Muslims or
Psalm 23 reminds us that we are never alone—that we are led beside still waters, our souls are restored, and even when we walk through difficult valleys, we are not afraid. Because we are lucky enough to have had the guidance of so many amazing shepherds.