Book: Matthew

If we are committed to the way of Jesus more even than we are to each other, we will end up doing what is truly best for each other and for all God’s creation.

Living as God requires may not make sense in the world, but God will make it worth our while.

The gifts we most need – a place of belonging and a place of sacred meaning – will be found when we offer them to others.

Joseph is an admirable model of the willingness to put calling and values ahead of convenience or reputation.

Each human being is an icon of Christ and so the respect and care with which we deal with others is an expression of our devotion to Christ.

Will we live out allegiance to the state, the economy, the mass media, consumerism, status-driven values and wealth, or to God, to the new community, to upside-down kingdom values and to a radical alternative which is the source of hope and transformation?

Sin seeks to enslave our bodies, but if we will take on Christ’s yoke we are incorporated into Christ’s body for redemption.

Fights and divisions in the church are a sign of how far we still have to go, but if we don’t run from them, God will use them to mature us and grow our ability to love.

The church rightly has an impact on the world, bringing out the taste of God, but it won’t come from pedantic obedience.

Preparing the way of the Lord is not just a temporary clean-up for the visitor, but an embracing of the new possibilities that are opening to us.

Christ’s call to respond to his presence in the needy is a call for the church to embrace a lifestyle of radical communal hospitality (but we have often used it to justify empires built on the labour of guilt-ridden, over-extended, under-prepared Christians!)

Although all in the church may appear equally worthy, it is those who live the life (inward and outward) of the Kingdom now who are prepared for its coming.