Love makes us do crazy things, like let someone else in the house have the last piece of cheesecake even though it is our favorite. Love lets the person behind us have the better parking space ahead in the parking lot.
We can be comforted by the fact that God is still the one God, a God of integrity, not divided. God’s heart, mind, and lips are always on the same page even when ours aren’t.
For a son not to bury a father was a sign of ultimate disrespect and rejection; to give up one’s wealth threatened his life, his well-being, his position, even potentially his family. Remember– there was no middle class. It was all or nothing.
Just writing the words “another mass shooting” makes my hand shake. As I write this, ten victims are known to have died, and twenty victims are hospitalized.
Spiritually, I have been really lost many times. I have learned that the streams to follow in that case are prayer disciplines. In the exquisite wilds of human life, God is always downstream along one of those waterways.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes
Not a word of what Jesus said to the children is recorded in scripture, but what a powerful lesson he preached. He swept aside the barriers raised against the children. He did not just talk to them of God’s love. He held them in that love. He blessed them with it.
“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if
Andrewes was a bishop, and a scholar, but also a guide, a person interested in his fellow man, one who was also seemingly connected to the world around him that God had created, and the soul who express his intimacy with God through his prayers.
God’s grace is abundant and steadfast; it calls to us to sink our roots deep and flourish, to spread like a palm tree or a cedar and claim our piece of sky, but also to share in the work of God to provide shelter and shade throughout creation.