Topic: Faithfulness

A church discerns its new name while remembering that identity is not possession, but a journey of love shaped by God’s call to be a blessing.

To name Christ as King is to identify ourselves as dissenters to the claims of any other authority and to critique all power-mongering.

Jesus warns us that disasters are ubiquitous and do not all herald the end of time, and calls us to persevere in the life of love even when we are blamed and persecuted.

As societies collapse under the weight of their own sin, God’s promises stand firm and we are called to persevere in faith and righteousness.

The saints of God are engaged in a war between conflicting empires battling for control of the world, but Jesus has radically transformed our understanding of how we fight.

Despite first appearances, Jesus’s call to “count the cost” of following him is not so much about ensuring we can succeed as it is about ensuring we can faithfully persevere in the face of failure.

Our call to bear witness to the culture of God comes at a time when we face the real prospect of doom and destruction, and so must contend with that.

In difficult times, the simple virtues of love, humility, and non-judgement are the starting point of faithful living.

When we fear for our own safety, we condone the violence that promises to protect us, and we use religion to justify it, but Jesus wants to free us to rise above the fear without resorting to hatred and violence.

Temptation is something we all have to deal with, and Jesus shows the way in dealing with it.

Faced with the decline and disintegration of the Church, we are called to offer ourselves to God as the new branch who faithfully carry God’s love and mercy into a new era.

Perhaps amidst the increasingly depressing state of the world, Jesus is calling us to learn the path of faithfulness from those who never win.