Topic: Grace

When we approach God’s way of life and the Sabbath not as punishment, but as gift, the experience becomes a chance to rest from work and from striving; and to allow space for God through contemplation and re-creation and play.

In our desire to see mercy and compassion expressed for the needy, we must beware of falling into desiring the exact opposite for those who have not shown mercy and compassion.

God’s grace is so extravagant that it will offend us as long as we are measuring our worth in comparison to others.

God does not judge people’s capacity to respond and focus love and care only on the productive, but gives gifts with wanton freedom and extravagance and calls us to do the same.

Trying to establish our own righteousness burdens us with divisiveness and hostility, but Jesus offers us rest and freedom.

God and religion misunderstood can be the cause of hostility, division and violence, but the God made known to us in Jesus is a God of grace who generously gives us life, freedom and reconciliation.

God’s refining work is done not through judgement and punishment, but through the transforming power of love.

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.

The “things” we so readily put our trust in, or find our identity in, will all fall, and only God’s love and care for us will remain.

Forgiving the way Jesus does will always be seen as not just disreputable, but even dangerous and criminal.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

In order for God to come to us as the healer and the liberator of souls, we must be prepared to let go of every religious pretension, every cultural certainty, every economic doctrine, every aspirational rule.