Behind Locked Doors
Jesus’s encounter with Thomas and the first disciples can show us a thing or two about living under lockdown and hoping for a miracle to save us.
Jesus’s encounter with Thomas and the first disciples can show us a thing or two about living under lockdown and hoping for a miracle to save us.
As Woody Allen said, 90% of success is just showing up, and in the resurrection, Jesus really shows up!
Jesus leads the way towards a new experience of life that is so utterly alive that death is powerless to threaten, limit or constrain it.
The COVID-19 scare can reinforce our Lenten call to prepare our hearts by facing up to our mortality and the real limits of our control over the world.
The forgiveness encountered in Jesus is extravagant and all-inclusive, but those who determinedly reject and demonise the Spirit’s winds of change can cut off their own access to it.
The gift of tongues can be a valuable part of our private spirituality, but the needs of public worship require something more than the private intimacies of our spirituality.
Our generation is very good at identifying evils and calling them out, but if our hearts are not occupied by God’s love and mercy, the results can be disastrous.
Jesus calls us to unite as his body around his table, and if we come to the table without seeking that unity, we dishonour Jesus.
Jesus calls us to follow his lead in bringing healing, hope and positive leadership to others, and not to be too worried about anxious and vexatious criticism.
Jesus calls us to neither conservatism nor iconoclasm, but to a faithful reckoning with the gifts and the sins of the past as we welcome and adapt to the new.