Deep peace
Micah 5:2-5 (12/20/2015)
Deep peace is a sense of well-being, of balance, of being whole, of being connected
to God and to each other, to all of creation and even to my own self. But I cannot make that connection, it has to come to me from outside me.
“He will bring peace …”
The Lord will take delight in you
Zephaniah 3:14-20 (12/13/2015)
“In his love he will be silent.” The Lord will take delight in you, and in his love he will be silent.
When was the other time God was silent? On the seventh day, resting and taking delight in all he had made.
The path of peace
Malachi 2:17 – 3:5 (12/6/2015)
Into the path of peace. The preposition matters! It is not the path to peace, but the path of peace. Peace is not the destination. Peace is the way.
He is coming
Jeremiah 33:14-16 (11/29/2015)
Faith is always about the future. One day, we will not need faith anymore, because we will see face-to-face, but meanwhile these three remain: faith, hope, and love. Faith
imagination
gives us the will and the energy to keep on keeping on and shows us the way to go. Faith
imagination
holds the vision of the world that will be when he comes before our eyes and hearts so we will not faint, so we will not give up, so we will not be fooled into putting our trust in anything or anyone that is less than just, anything or anyone that is less than right.
Look
Revelation 1:4-8 (11/22/2015)
And do not listen, Christian brothers and sisters, to the ones who bluster on about the need to utterly destroy ISIS, because that is not Jesus’ way. That is not our way. Evil will not win. We know that evil will not win, but if we answer evil for evil we only serve its cause. Those who follow and love Jesus follow and love his way: “Do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good.”
When the curse is a blessing
Mark 13:1-8 (11/15/2015)
When she let go, when she let both coins drop into the Temple treasury, when she had nothing at all left to live on, what did she have left?
Two little copper coins
Mark 12:41-44 (11/8/2015)
Our lives are a mix of sweet and bitter, blessing and curse. Our hope is, our only hope is, that, on balance, there is more sweet than bitter, that the blessing will outweigh the curse. This is our only hope … until we come into the sanctuary and our eyes fall on the cross.
You are not far
Mark 12:28-34 (11/1/2015)
Jesus told him he was not far from the kingdom of God, not because he had succeeded at being loving, but because he believed love matters most.
Your faith has made you well
Mark 10:46-52 (10/25/2015)
Could it be that faith itself is wellness? That it is wellness to live with hope? That it is wellness to live with assurance? That it is wellness to believe, to know, that it will be well?
You don’t know what you are asking for
Mark 10:32-45 (10/18/2015)
Whatever we say we believe, we choose and act and plan and be as if the future is in our hands, as if what becomes of us depends upon what we do or don’t do.
Let go
Mark 10:17-31 (10/11/2015)
We cling because? Because we do not trust God. Because we do not trust in the promise. If you did, if you did trust in the promise, you could let go, couldn’t you?
Let go
Mark 10:13-16 (10/4/2015)
Do you know how much time and energy is wasted, how much damage is done to the gospel, by followers of Jesus trying to protect it, trying to defend it against its enemies and detractors, instead of trying to live it and to joyfully share its good news?
Bigger than we think
Mark 9:38-41 (9/27/2015)
It’s the small, insignificant, personal acts of kindness that carry the full weight of the love of God. Every kind word, every gracious gesture, every drink of water given, is a seed, a seed of hope.
Not everybody can be first, but everybody can be last
Mark 9:33-37 (9/20/2015)
It’s not just me and not just the disciples. We are all programmed almost from birth, by our families, by our schools, by the rest of humanity, to think in teams of winning and losing.
What about you?
Mark 8:27-30 (9/13/2015)
And because hope is a choice, you can’t give hope to anybody else. But you can plant a seed. You can plant seeds of hope …
In common
Proverbs 22:2 – 7:13 (9/6/2015)
“Come down off the cross,
we can use the wood.”
Meaning? Let go of self-pity. Don’t be a martyr. Don’t get “stuck” by your own choice in an endless cycle of pain and unhappiness. You can get down! Come down off the cross. You don’t need to be there.
Exasperated
Mark 6:53 – 7:13 (8/30/2015)
This is the shameful public persona of Christians in our day. People who draw lines. People who themselves separate the sheep from the goats instead of leaving that to God, while oblivious to the fact that they themselves are numbered almost certainly among the goats! People who make war against the infidels, against the atheists, against the immoral, instead of making peace. People who whine about being persecuted, forgetting that Jesus told them to expect to be persecuted and to be happy when they are!
How I want to be there!
Psalm 84 (8/23/2015)
How I want to be here! Not because it feels like home, but because it doesn’t. I am drawn here by the strangeness and the wonder, by all that I don’t understand but that leaves me in awe. I come here to be challenged, to be made uncomfortable, and to be changed. I want to be where I feel like an outsider or an impostor, and yet, somehow, belong.
Give her something to eat
Mark 5:21-43 (6/28/2015)
What do we want for our children?
Today is the day!
2 Corinthians 6:1-2 (6/21/2015)
You who come here, consciously or unconsciously, looking for something more, looking for something meaningful and lasting, literally looking for love
today is the day to be saved!
Be the church: enjoy this life
Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 (5/17/2015)
Just a thought. If you really believed that in the grand scheme of things anything you might do in this day is useless, wouldn’t that free you to enjoy it?
Be the church: reject racism
Acts 8:26-40 (5/3/2015)
These are our Christian progenitors, the foundation upon which the church of Jesus Christ has been built: Jews and half-Arabs and Africans. So tell me … what color is the church? Olive and brown and black. At least that’s what it was in the beginning. What it surely was not was white!
Be the church: fight for the powerless
Acts 4:5-12 (4/26/2015)
Be the church! Follow Jesus! Fight for the powerless! Not by being strong enough, but by being willing to be weak enough.
Be the church: forgive often
Acts 3:12-19 (4/19/2015)
You are the judge. You are the judge empowered to pass sentence on every person who has hurt you. You have the power to condemn or to show mercy, to exact punishment
by taking vengeance or by exiling the offender
to exact punishment in one way or another or to forgive. What will you do?
Be the church: share earthly and spiritual resources
Acts 4:32-35 (4/12/2015)
we pray for ourselves …
for clarity of mind,
instead of shrewdness
for warmth of affection
instead of cool composure
for generosity of spirit,
instead of careful self-preservation
Again … joy
Isaiah 53:10-12 (4/5/2015)
How does it all begin?
With a dance …
What is left unsaid
Isaiah 53:7-9 (3/29/2015)
All the while we thought that his suffering was punishment sent by God, but it is God who is being punished! There is the cross! That terrible emblem of punishment! And who hangs on the cross? The one who comes in the name of the Lord! He hangs there, silently. He hangs there, humbly. Here God is silent. Here God is humble.
Because?
For you! To go all the way for you! To give everything up for you! To take your anger, take your doubt, take your pride, take your selfishness, take your ignorance, take your ingratitude, to take them all from you, to take them all from you.
It’s not fair
Isaiah 53:6 (3/22/2015)
The world is hurting. The world is lost. The people of this world are divided against each other, hurting each other and themselves, going this way and that way, pulling in different directions, pulling each other apart. Someone needs to acknowledge the pain. Someone needs to see the pain and go to the pain and take on the pain and absorb the pain. Someone needs to drink the cup, the cup of suffering. Someone needs to drink it dry, until suffering itself is exhausted, until death itself is swallowed up … in victory!
More’s the pity
Isaiah 53:4-5 (3/15/2015)
What does Jesus do? More than pity. Jesus closes the distance. He goes to where the suffering is, and takes it on himself.
How then do we follow?
Who could have seen the Lord’s hand in this?
Isaiah 53:1-3 (3/8/2015)
We don’t know. There is so much we don’t know. But that is the glory of our faith, not its flaw: that who God is and what God does is so much more than anything we could ever have imagined or predicted or made up, so much more than anything we can even explain.
They will see and understand something they had never known
Isaiah 52:14-15 (3/1/2015)
This is something that the world had never known, that what seems to them like misfortune and weakness is actually blessing and great power, that it is exactly in and by what seems to be loss that real blessing is gained and real blessing is given.
My servant
Isaiah 52:13 (2/22/2015)
“Goodness is stronger than evil;
love is stronger than hate.”
Do you believe it? Are you ready to live it?
We are going
Isaiah 40:27-31 (2/15/2015)
Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed.
Not one of them is ever missing
Isaiah 40:25-27 (2/8/2015)
So pray for me, brothers! Pray for me, sisters! Help me to drive ole Satan away! Because Satan is a deceiver. And what is Satan’s deceit? Convincing you that you are on your own. Convincing you that God
if, of course, there even is a God
convincing you that God surely doesn’t care about you.
Have you not known?
Isaiah 40:12-25 (2/1/2015)
To whom can the holy God be compared? Certainly not to our idols, our idols, our homemade gods, that pacify us and get us through life’s little bumps and turns, but only because we get ourselves through life’s little bumps and turns, because the idol itself, the god we fashion for ourselves, has nothing but us in it. When the wind blows, when the sky turns dark, when the emptiness of space opens out before us, when the terrors of history unfold before us, our idols
and we
fall down.
But the Lord is there …
Lupine
Isaiah 40:6-8 (1/25/2015)
That’s what we are! Wildflowers. Lupine. We bloom, for a brief time, but we bloom! We bring delight to our maker, and, if we live and bloom well, to each other. Our lives are not something we must carefully and fearfully preserve and protect and hold tight to, because we cannot. Our frailty is our freedom. We do not live forever. We will not live long, but we can live!
Meanwhile
Isaiah 40:3-5 (1/18/2015)
Fill every valley … every valley of pain, every valley of doubt, every valley of the shadow of death. Fill it! Fill the hole, the awful hole in people’s souls, the terrible hole in people’s hearts. Smooth the rough places. Soothe the pain. Fill the emptiness. Lift up the ones who have fallen down. Lift up the ones who have been pushed down.
And level every mountain … every mountain of hatred, every mountain of haughtiness, every mountain of greed. Tear down the high places of pride. Tear down the high places of self-absorption. Tear down the high places of condescension.
Long enough
Isaiah 40:1-2 (1/11/2015)
A mentor once told me that it is a minister’s job to comfort those who are disturbed and to disturb those who are comfortable. So which are you? Comfortable or disturbed?
The marks of a great nation
Jeremiah 31:7-14 (1/4/2015)
Our nation is great, too, not when when we flaunt our successes, but when we admit our failures, when we acknowledge our shortcomings. We are great when we know and when we admit, to ourselves and to any who are listening, that we are not yet great, but still flawed.