Book: Matthew

The hope that empowers us to maintain our counter-cultural obedience to Christ, is that the One who will eventually rule over all is the One who offers himself as a suffering servant of all.

The Coming Christ will reward and celebrate with those he finds having a go and making the most of all they have been given, not those who fearfully play it safe.

Authority in the Christian community derives not from worldly status or popularity contests, but from a humble willingness to imitate Christ in his devotion to God and his service of others.

Our faith is about grace – that God comes to meet us in the truth of who we are. God is far less threatened by the darkness in our lives than we are!

At the deepest level of our need, we are called to rest in the love and righteousness of God, which can never be forced.

There is no such thing as a ritual-free space, and performed well or performed badly, rituals change things, change people’s lives.

Many of us want the faith story to go according to our script, but the call of Jesus crashes through our dominant religious and cultural understandings and aspirations.

Jesus is opening our eyes and widening our focus to allow God’s ‘unbiased grace’ to break through.

The only thing which proves to be worth anything at all, the only thing that proves able to continually redeem our lives from the brink is faith in the crucified and risen one.

Darkness cannot conceal anything from God, but God who confronts us with truth and justice, and invites us to choose life and promises to help and bless us in that choice.

It is only by letting go of our tribal need to define who is in and who is out, that any of us shall, in the end, show forth a kingdom which is from God.

Those who insist that faith must satisfy their every ideology may miss out, while those who simply yoke themselves to Jesus will find the freedom and peace for which they yearn.