"mystery" Tagged Touchpoints (Page 2)
The Refiner’s Fire
“Sometimes I wish Jesus would have just come to earth and said, “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.” I would have been good with that. But Jesus is not a Pollyanna. He’s a realist. He will undergo a death and resurrection. And so will we. There’s no way to do an end run around Good Friday to get to Easter. For him or us.”
Forgiveness Leads to Repentance
“But here’s the thing. We don’t need to run and hide like Adam and Eve. We don’t need to live in fear and dread. We know what kind of God we have. We know whether God, at God’s core, is forgiving or vengeful.”
Getting Rid of the Bubble Wrap
“This is a text to read when it feels like the world is crashing down around us, when our minds are too jaded and our spirits too discouraged to see how God may be present in our current darkness. This is the passage to read when we come face to face with the mess we as humans have made of our relationships and of this world, when we recognize how profoundly broken and how incapable of fixing ourselves we are. For it is in this place of helplessness and disorientation that hope emerges.”
Unity, not Separation
Grace and peace from the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. The essence of the Divine. Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.” Luke 5:1-11 Peter is both right and wrong at the same time. “I’m a sinner” … Correctomundo Peter! “Leave me to myself” … Couldn’t be more wrong on that one. Before we begin to talk about this text, we have to come to some definition…
Treasured
“Perhaps that is why this meal is so important to me. In the night in which he was betrayed, the Christ –who was treasured by no one this night – took bread and wine and said to his disciples, “You are my treasure… This is my body and blood given and shed because I treasure you and ALL PEOPLE.” Here in this meal I experience a Jesus who is all grown up… who has grown bigger than my expectations and understanding… who treasures the untreasurable, forgives the unforgiveable, and loves the unlovable.”
Two Women
“On the one hand, I am fully aware that I am not among the 1% and so I kind of like the idea of bringing the mighty and powerful down, but I don’t have to drive more than a few minutes from here to realize that to a great many people, I am the proud, the powerful, and the rich.”
John the Baptist’s Hot Sauce
“And so, I need that unquenchable fire to burn in me. To burn away the chaff in me so that I can bear fruit that befits repentance. What I need is a continual baptism of water and fire. Though frankly, I would just prefer the water.”
Happy Birthday!
“You see, creation never stops. Life and death and birth are a continuous reality in our lives and the life of the world. Life is a gift, not a possession, and it’s given daily.”
Jesus Forbids Forbidding
“Jesus takes on the ultimate exclusions, murder and death. And transforms them into resurrection and life. You see, even exclusion gets taken up into the Mystery and is transformed into healing and wholeness. Jesus forbids forbidding by transforming it, not excluding it.”
Jesus is JUST KID-ing
“While your relationship with Jesus may be personal, it is not private and neither is your salvation, your healing, or your wholeness. Which, by the way is what the word ‘salvation’ means. It means ‘healing,’ ‘wholeness,’ ‘completeness.’ And none of that can you accomplish alone…in private…personally.”
Eternal Life is Now
“Eternal life is life that is constantly renewed.”
Food Fight!
Grace and peace from the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread;” Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. The Israelites, freed from slavery, come face to face with freedom and what do they do? They pray to God that they could be…