Book: Exodus

Twenty-five years on from 9/11, still trapped between an angry sea and old enemies, and still asked to accept a mercy that plays no favourites.

When grief and loss make no sense, scripture’s oldest protest offers not answers, but a God who weeps beside us.

Context changes everything. Where, when and how we encounter life changes what we seek and long for from God and faith. Adaptive faith allows for the constancy of God in our ever-changing lives. It also requires us to be fluid – like water!

We all learn our desires from others, but most of them are destructive, and law tries to control them. The pathway to freedom and life is to follow Jesus and learn to desire as he desires.

There is life and nourishment hidden in the depths, and through Jesus the rock it is accessible to us.

God’s offer of unlimited forgiveness creates a new world in which we are free to stop judging one another and turning on one another and spiralling into violence and hatred.

Our true identity is only found when we discover that it is not about us, but that we are only truly anyone in relation to the God who is everything, and who is not the opposite of anything.

The stories of Moses, Elijah and Jesus on various mountain tops reveals a process of God’s self-revelation as the one who loves us and suffers for us.

Modelling ourselves on those who model themselves on Jesus is a healthy pathway to fulfilling the image of God within us.

God invites us to live joyously, boldly and freely in the midst of mystery, but we are frequently tempted to grasp for something more tangible and certain.

When we use the biblical law to reinforce a worldview of sin and punishment, we doom ourselves to live in a judgemental world, a world from which Jesus offers to break us free.

Law typically serves to contain the expression of human desire within safe bounds, but Jesus calls us to follow him in fulfilling the law through radical love and mercy that always seeks reconciliation.