Our unwitting abusive treatment of the Royal family is a symptom of our entanglement in systemic persecution.
Our unwitting abusive treatment of the Royal family is a symptom of our entanglement in systemic persecution.
Jesus calls all who are worn out from maintaining appearances as hosts to relax into the humility of being guests.
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.
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).
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.
All that matters about God, about sin and forgiveness, and about living with integrity and freedom, flows from the human encounter with the crucified and risen Jesus.
A close encounter with God in Christ can make us paralysingly aware of our own sin and failure, but the experience of grace can transform that into a solidarity and gratitude that empowers us.
God’s love is passionate, attentive, tender and ardent. Jesus the bridegroom comes and woos God’s people in every generation.
The Kingdom of God can only be accepted the way a child welcomes a hug, not the way lawyers accept a divorce settlement.
The power of God is that a contagion of life—of transformation, hope, and peace—is more powerful than a contagion of death.
We live in amidst a culture of highly toxic, self-righteous, finger-pointing. Jesus calls us to a radical love which will stop the blame game but still speak transforming truth to those who oppress.
The experience of winter is God’s gift, inviting us to silence, healing and new depth of life.
The culture of God rises in defiance of the empires of this world, but it will look more like an annoying outbreak of self-sown, invasive weeds than an alternative empire.
We mostly don’t see ourselves as either terrible sinners or as gloriously Christ-like, but in the resurrection we are called to fully imagine both as world-changing truths.
God will walk with us in suffering and work redemptively within it, but God is not powerful enough to just remove it.
When our world and our hearts feel dry, cut off, and despondent, there is hope and life to be found in God’s promises.
If you’re looking for wisdom, healing, practical solutions, look to Jesus, because church leaders constantly fail when they do any more than point to Jesus.
Those who have too strong a belief in their own goodness to engage in the real, flesh and blood work of building community in the here and now, can end up struggling to accept God’s grace.
Self-interested leaders will frequently manufacture frightening images of an angry dangerous God to silence opposition and maintain their grip on power, but Jesus opens our eyes to these abuses and to the reality of a God of incorruptible love.