Palm Sunday – Our Faith in Dark Days

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Palm Sunday – Our Faith in Dark Days

The legendary stories of Jesus’ birth and death serve as mirrored bookends to Jesus’ unique life. Jesus’ birth story challenges us to look for God’s presence in unexpected places and people. Jesus’ death story reminds us that we are imperfect creatures, prone to fear and putting our own safety and comfort first.

May we always be open to God’s presence, and may we develop a faith so bold that the stones don’t have to shout praises to God.

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John 9 – Seeing with New Eyes

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John 9 – Seeing with New Eyes

Awaken... It’s an action-oriented word. It’s a word focused on looking forward, not back. It’s a word that calls us to be intentionally mindful of our immediate surroundings. When Jesus healed the blind man, his newfound eyesight awakened him to new realities, new possibilities, and a new understanding of God’s presence and power.
To what is God trying to awaken each of us?

Make no mistake, this whole eye-opening, awakening stuff can feel overwhelming – much like seeing color for the first time. Once God reveals something to us, we can’t unsee it. This is when the power of a faith community is so important. We NEED to discuss what we hear and see (what God “puts on our hearts,” to use churchy language) so that, together, we can better understand the world around us and how we should respond to it.

Consider adding this simple request to your morning prayer, “Lord, help me SEE Your presence around me more clearly today. Help me SEE Your presence in other people. And help me BE Your presence to people who need to hear, see, and feel Your love, Your grace, and Your peace.”

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John 8 – Dignity Instead of Shame

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John 8 – Dignity Instead of Shame

Without naming the crime, Jesus acknowledges the woman’s transgression and immediately offers her God’s love, grace, mercy, and compassion. When I read verses that talk about God judging us, I think about this brief exchange between Jesus and the woman. Today’s story is a powerful reminder of God’s ceaseless, tireless efforts to deliver us out of shame and into dignity, out of despair and into renewal, out of judgement and into blessing. Surely this is how the redemptive Kingdom of God operates. Surely this is the theology, the philosophy... the way of living into which God invites us.

The only question for us today is how can each of us offer the people we meet God’s love, grace, mercy, and compassion? IF each of us sincerely makes an effort to share those aspects of God’s nature with others, we will become better and better at loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others.

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Reaching Out for Healing – Mark 3:1-6, 31-35

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Reaching Out for Healing – Mark 3:1-6, 31-35

God offers us love, acceptance and healing with no strings attached. All we have to do is respond to the Holy Spirit’s invitations.
When we ask God to lead us, we need to actively listen for God to respond to our prayers. And when God asks us to do something, we need to have faith that God can act in mighty ways through the most routine actions.

Where else is God calling us to step forward and hold out our hands?
Where else is God leading us – individually and as a faith community?
Are we listening? Are we looking? Are we ready and willing to say, “Yes Lord, if You lead us, we’ll follow. We may be a bit nervous, so be patient with us.

As we follow God’s lead, we can take GREAT comfort in Jesus’ final words from today’s reading: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

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Join Us for Dinner! – Mark 2:1-17

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Join Us for Dinner! – Mark 2:1-17

As God’s children, we are ALL warmly invited and declared worthy of celebrating our loving relationship with God through the elements of bread and juice, symbolically connecting us to the table where Jesus shared a meal with Levi and his very imperfect friends.

There is space for everyone: those who have been miraculously healed, those who are skeptical of healings; those who are curious; those who have been rejected by communities of faith, and those who have never before shared in this meal.

This is what the Kingdom of God looks like, everyone equally welcomed, equally accepted, equally embraced. This is a diverse Kingdom that we can ALL call home!

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The Meaning of Life – Matthew 22:34-46

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The Meaning of Life – Matthew 22:34-46

The Great Commandments Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy and Leviticus serve as perhaps the ultimate litmus test for our own lives and communities.
· How well are we loving God?
· How well are we loving ourselves?
· How well are we loving others?

These are not rhetorical questions. In fact, I often think we would do well starting and ending each day reminding ourselves of these three loves as an encouragement, a compass, and a litmus test – a way of determining where we are and what adjustments we need to make to keep everything balanced and healthy.

Here’s the Good News that Jesus proclaimed: The Lord, our God, our Creator is indeed with us and loves us more than we can imagine! God’s “plan,” the meaning of our lives, is to embrace that Divine love, share it with ourselves, and let it flow through us to others. That is how we create the Kingdom of God here on Earth.

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