Adversity, violence, and suffering can come as a consequence of not just sin, but of radical love, but with love it can strengthen and sharpen us for fullness of life.
Imagination, fed by Jesus, enables us to grow and stretch, to make a way from what is to what could be, for the sake of worlds of hope God is already excited about.
When we read scripture through the eyes of Jesus, we find a way free of the violent abusive images of God in some of the ancient texts.
The Lord’s Prayer is a manifesto for a whole new way of relating to God and the world.
Inviting Christ into your dwelling means being renovated from the inside out.
Those who are insiders in the life of God are characterised by their love and compassion for all, especially those deemed unworthy of it, and by the humility to be schooled by outsiders.
Being missioners needs to be patterned on Jesus if it is to have any integrity at all, and so it will be characterised by intentional engagement, genuine curiosity, deep listening, allowing others to be a blessing to us, and trusting ourselves to God.
We live in uncertain times, unsure of the future shape of the church, but Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to us, not to give us certainty, but to guide and sustain us in the uncertainty.
The Holy Spirit is breathing sacred life into all creation and continually working for the making sacred of all creation.
Living out the unity we have in Christ, is more difficult and more important when we are at odds with one another.
Much traditional morality is based on the idea of separation into binary categories, good and bad, but the Bible also points a path towards a liberating non-binary future in God.
All our dinners are an anticipation of the vision of a new world, where God’s very self dwells with mortals, all are welcomed, and all pain is taken away.
We come to be followers of Jesus, not when we believe certain facts about him, but when we hear his voice and follow what it says (even if we don’t know where the voice comes from).
Into the surreal fears and horrors of our murderous world comes the surreal delight of God’s resurrection laughter and the promise of life.
The resurrection of Jesus opens a path and calls us to follow into a life that is no longer dominated by the crucifying powers that destroy some of us and dehumanise others.
When God is doing new things, our familiar signposts are no longer helpful, and our capacity to follow is dependent on our living relationship with Jesus.
In Christ, God has made an agreement with us, offering us everything and demanding nothing, but if we offer nothing we will be at risk of squandering it all.
Christian spirituality is full of yearning and hungering and reaching for a God who can never quite be satisfyingly grasped.
If we can hold on to the visions of glory, while resisting the urge to nail them down, we can step into a world of suffering knowing that there is light.
The temptations faced by Jesus reveal common patterns in the demonic temptations that we face in our own lives.