Book: Hebrews

The life that Jesus calls us too will not be found and enjoyed until we give up trying to engineer the life we dreamed we were supposed to be living.

In the violence and suffering that surround the Christmas story, we find the revelation of a God who does not inflict violence and suffering, but suffers violence to bring love and peace.

There are numerous competing claims about what a faithful Christian life looks like, and sometimes the truth about following Jesus may be the least palatable of them all.

Only when the world models itself on the self-sacrificial love and mercy we have seen in Jesus will it be saved from the cycles of apocalyptic violence and chaos.

The Christmas story includes a message of God’s solidarity with and care for children and families who live in fear and who flee to seek refuge. We corrupt the message if we make it about our children and not all children.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Full-blooded Christian discipleship may cost us some precious relationships and a lot of blood sweat and tears, but we will have plenty of new supporters and it all all be well worth it in the end.

Believing and following Jesus is about faith because certainty is impossible and doubts are unavoidable.

God wants love rather than sacrifice, but in a fallen world love that is genuine will often be sacrificial.

True worship, which honours and pleases God, is a seamless combination of ritual praise and a life lived in doing good for others.

Faith is not the absence of doubt, but the courage and trust to be faithful to God in your your actions and life, despite doubts and disappointments.

A growing incidence of cataclysmic violence is not a sign of God’s activity, but it does call us to hold on to our hope and look for God’s action in small signs of life coming from death.