Faithfulness isn’t found in a single action, moment of agreement, or emotional decision. The work of being a Christian spans all our days. It’s a continual choice: the choice to walk in the path and pattern of Jesus. It’s the training of oneself, moment by moment and opportunity by opportunity, to follow the Way of Love, to offer kindness, dignity, and respect to everyone we encounter.

Although it’s central to our understanding of God, the word “trinity” doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the Bible. And it’s a weird concept, to be honest. It took several hundred years—and few major heretical movements—for ancient Church leadership to really hammer out the details of what the term even meant.

The Ascension is one of those “huh” events in the Bible. Although the early Church clearly thought it was important enough to pass on to later generations, from a modern worldview, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Flying people are something from dreams and movies, not real life.

…“abide”….is a word of intention and commitment, associated more with military occupation or settling a frontier. It carries the idea of standing your ground or struggling to maintain a position, not simply dwelling somewhere in tranquility.

Even if we know it wasn’t good, the past at least looks stable from here, so it’s easy to desire a return to older times. But trying to recreate the past, itself broken in many ways, only leads to disappointment and failure.

If you were to ask most American Christians why Easter is important, you’ll probably hear an answer that mentions the resurrection but continues to place its primary emphasis on death…

What is it with God and blood? What is it with Jesus and suffering? Blood speaks of violence. Blood speaks of pain. Blood speaks of death. Likewise, the cross speaks of the same violence, the same pain, and the same death. If God is supposed to be a God of life and love, what is this obsession with blood?

Sometimes I think that repentance as active change is hard not just because of the difficulties of unlearning old habits and implementing new ones but because on some level, we identify ourselves with the way we’ve been living.

Unfortunately, a lot of Christians spend their entire lives in a similar state of fear—paranoia, really—one connected to two little words in today’s epistle reading: “the world.”

…what if this story isn’t necessarily about divine judgment? What if God didn’t send the flood? What if we read this as God simply giving humanity the very thing it proved itself to have most desired?

A lot of people, even within the Church, aren’t particularly fond of the Apostle Paul. Frankly, it isn’t all that hard to see why. He’s confusing. He can be harsh. And he often sounds pretty full of himself.

So, well beyond the visuals we imagine and applications we often take from the phrase “fishers of men,” Jesus proves himself a masterful poet, uniting the ideas of overcoming chaos with the work of life and resurrection in a single word.

…I look around, and honestly, I don’t know how to fix any of this. I don’t know how to help people I’ve known most of my life, much less the rest of the country. I’m neither Jesus nor any other kind of miracle worker. I don’t have the skill to make the blind see. I can’t restore hearing to those who have gouged out their own ears.

Advent is like Lent in that it’s a time of preparation, hence the traditional purple color. But Advent is Lent’s reflection. Because of its subtle but significant differences, churches have decided it’s important to distinguish it with blue.

So between the slave marching up with a litany of accusations and then not even having made an effort with the ruler’s money, it’s pretty easy to understand why someone would get so angry in response.

If they’re angry at all.

“People. Only people.” is rewiring a lot about what I’ve understood Jesus to say, too. Statements I always viewed as a little bit hyperbolic or needlessly expository have taken on a completely new significance.

Those of you listening or reading closely may have noticed that our passage starts with the preposition “for,” a word that can be a bit of a trickster.

Those of you listening or reading closely may have noticed that our passage starts with the preposition “for,” a word that can be a bit of a trickster.

Have you ever heard of Molech? He’s one of the few deities that the Bible explicitly condemns by name.

The Christian life is about living. It’s about paying attention, about moving and making decisions. It’s about seeing where God is at work in the world, not just the Church…