Year: 2020

“As much trouble as we have realizing that the writers of the Bible lived and wrote in very different times and cultures, we can’t assume that our understanding is the right one until we have checked to see what the first hearers would have heard and comprehended.  Things that the people at the sermon on the mount understood would be very different today.”

“What good news do I hear? That new life emerges and blossoms, even as disaster looms. That we all are growing, no matter the circumstances; that we long for Christ’s message as my orchid longed for sunlight. That beginnings and endings come and go; this time of virus and violence and blindness and paralysis will end. You yourself are meant to be here now; you who have heard and believed the message, you are called and sent forth to sing a new song in a waning age, in the dawn of an emerging reality.”

“This is a pretty hard thing Jesus is calling and modeling for us to do: to not treat people as disposable even if they seem to deserve it. Too much of our society is eager to write people off based on snap judgments, even based on appearances, while not even making a token attempt to get to know people who are different from us. It’s much easier to make assumptions, judge harshly, even mock, and then cut people off as having no claim upon us at all.”

“When the metaphoric seas of change lap at our deck we spend untold time and energy, enormous resources, protecting something that nature and God insist must be change? And now, September is here during a year of shifting sands. I feel the fall chill in the air. Life has been altered in untold ways, yet all most people seem to hope for is a return to the ephemeral normal. But there is no such thing as “normal,” there never was.”

“As the seasons change

keep us open for your 

spirit at work”

“Job’s relationship with God is never personal, although he pleads passionately with God to release him, even kill him. Unlike David, or Jacob, who argued, pleaded, wrestled with God, but a God who cared for them, Job does not hear the voice God, or the Spirit, or see Jacob’s escalators of Angels, riding up and down, showing that the way to heaven is open.”