The culture of God is so radical in its loving embrace of everyone that mainstream society will see it as a dangerous rejection of all it holds dear.
The culture of God is so radical in its loving embrace of everyone that mainstream society will see it as a dangerous rejection of all it holds dear.
True Christianity is not transactional but transformational. It is not a series of prescribed actions intended to please God, but the formation of a culture of grace and other-centred love.
The ways of God’s Kingdom are different to the ways of this world. One thing is needed, prioritising God’s ways, and when we get that right, all the other things follow.
Election week sheds new light on how we can participate with Jesus in bringing satanic principalities and powers crashing down.
When we fear for our own safety, we condone the violence that promises to protect us, and we use religion to justify it, but Jesus wants to free us to rise above the fear without resorting to hatred and violence.
The Revelation’s surprising image of the absence of church buildings in the fulfilled holy city is a helpful reminder that they have always been a risky concession and that their dangers need to be carefully avoided.
There is no more waiting; there is no more longing. The wait is over. Jesus is alive, and he lives in all those who hear his voice and follow him.
Our lives are gift: a gift from abundance, a gift to be shared, a gift given for the life of the world, a gift we can give away because we are confident that the eternal source of life, the God who promises healing and freedom, will always replenish us.
Whether we think of the devil as a personal being or as a metaphor, our call to put our trust in Jesus to strengthen our resistance to the temptation of expedient short-cuts is the same.
We grow into the likeness of Christ as we model ourselves on him, and he is a model of growth rather than a model of static perfection.
God calls us to faithful expressions of the Culture of God which usually look unimpressive and unruly when judged by the world’s usual standards of success.
Jesus calls us to turn away from pathways of judgement and condemnation and to follow him on the harder path of love and new life.
Lent is a time to walk knowingly into the wilderness, to face the Accuser and the wild beasts that emerge when we live out our identity as God’s children.
The feeling of distance and separation from God – which we all feel – is perception not reality… it is the fruit of our fear and our holding-back.
Preparing ourselves for the coming Lord is not a matter of rigorous rule keeping, but rules can help us learn the appropriate new way of being.
We are invited to work towards visions of God’s reign, knowing we will never be entirely successful, but sustained by imagining the possibilities.
Jesus honours, commends and models a set of attitudes, or stances toward the world, which can and will change the world, but embracing them is no small challenge.
A reflection on the Good Friday story of the crucifixion from the perspective of the disciple Joanna.
Although the Church and our nation might be stronger if they were more inclusive, the real call to inclusion is simply part of the call to faithfully reflect Christ.
Faced with the decline and disintegration of the Church, we are called to offer ourselves to God as the new branch who faithfully carry God’s love and mercy into a new era.