Much of reality is usually hidden to us, but we can catch glimpses that become sustaining visions.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Discernment (Page 3)
If God seems unjust, we can and should question God’s integrity, for God welcomes our questions in order that the falsehoods might be stripped away and the truth revealed.
God’s action in the world and in our lives is constant and faithful, but rarely flamboyant or unambiguous. Discerning God’s activity is therefore a learned skill.
Jesus has sown the seeds. It is up to us to respond and even though we may get excited and the interest dissipates, or we get distracted and let the other priorities take a hold of us, or we actually feel nothing, the challenge for us is to continue our walk with God.
A growing incidence of cataclysmic violence is not a sign of God’s activity, but it does call us to hold on to our hope and look for God’s action in small signs of life coming from death.
God is doing and saying far more than we can see or hear, but God is always ready to penetrate the presumptions and complacencies that are closing our eyes and ears.
When we glimpse the fullness of what could be, we are called to the tough work of bridging the gap between here and there.
God is with us everywhere, whether we realise it or not, but there is still value in honouring special places of promise and revelation.
Christ is so present we loose the ability to see him. We need to worship to recover our sight.
Jesus full humanity meant that temptation was real for him, as it is for us. Temptation is not in itself bad, but indicates to us that we have a gift of choice.
The sacred is all around us and within us, but don’t make the mistake of trying to regulate it.
The Church will always contain more than its fair share of maliciousness, pettiness and nastiness, but the temptation to try to weed it out is a temptation to abandon the way of Christ and make things worse.
Any political wisdom which has lost touch with the values revealed to us in the character of God is on the road to disaster. It is not wisdom at all; it is just the mouthings of wealth and power.
The answers to the questions about our future directions are not easy, but we can trust the God who holds our future in his hands.
God invites us to be immersed in another possible reality, to look at the world with the dark and contrary light that comes from the cross of Jesus.
The wound of abandonment which haunts every human being will find its healing in Christ who is everywhere present as the authority and power of God.
Jesus calls us to take the way less travelled, to leave behind the sin that entangles, to be welcomed by God, that we may have power to welcome and love even our enemies.
Encounters with the risen Christ open our minds rather than narrow our theology.
Our perception of things can be distorted by the context in which we see them. Jesus constantly challenges our misperceptions by challenging us to look at things through a different frame. It is only by constant reference to Jesus and to the ways that he looked at things that we learn to see ourselves and our surrounds more realistically.
Christian discipleship is an ongoing journey, so any attempt to preserve what is right today can mean we are in the wrong place tomorrow because Jesus has moved on.