As in last week’s story, Jesus seems to be telling us that God is somewhat sloppy when it comes to bestowing gifts. Actually, it wasn’t just Jesus—from the book of Genesis on, we find God being willing to call and equip individuals whose flaws were as obvious as their strengths.
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Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer and invite God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, we are engaging in an act of imagination and visioning. Any time that we claim something of the prophetic vision or embrace a kingdom/kin-dom image of how we could be
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The yoke that Christ speaks of in our text (Matthew 11:29-30) is a symbol of relationship. When we come together to worship, we come together. We are not alone, but part of a community. We are yoked, meaning everything we do we do in the presence of Christ. We are
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We’re about hospitality this week. That sounds like a casual, or maybe even an extra kind of thing. “It’s not something essential,” we might think. It’s part of the social niceties that make us look good. But, in fact, we would be wrong, if that was our position. Jesus sees
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Having accepted the call to become a disciple and to help others become disciples, we now begin to understand what we don’t know. Or rather we embrace what we have to learn. Sometimes we get the impression that the end of faith is that initial yes to Jesus. As important as that
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Jesus sent the disciples out and asked them to trust that the resources that they needed to accomplish their mission were within reach. He told them to not focus on what they didn’t have or what they couldn’t afford, but to work with what was available to them. That level
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A disciple is a follower. That means there must be someone to follow and that someone wants followers. Considering that, in the gospel accounts, Jesus said “follow me” more often than he said, “believe in me,” we can be confident that there is a call to follow laid upon anyone
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Trinity Sunday is about God and not about us. And yet, because we can know God only in relationship, it has to be about us too. We acknowledge the God we worship and praise, the God to whom we owe everything, but we understand and/or experience God through how God
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Pentecost calls for celebration, for signs and symbols of a God who pushes through, who rushes in when it seems all is lost. This is a day where we remember that Spirit, wind, and breath are all part of the same experience and that life itself is a gift from
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What are we supposed to be ready to do? Tell our story! How do we get prepared to tell our story? Testimony is a long-standing tradition in the life of the church. We need to hear from one another so that we can become more comfortable speaking to others. We may
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