Book: Mark

God will walk with us in suffering and work redemptively within it, but God is not powerful enough to just remove it.

When our world and our hearts feel dry, cut off, and despondent, there is hope and life to be found in God’s promises.

Although we can’t prove that our faith isn’t another crackpot fraud, we can provide evidence by living lives of love, hope and hospitality.

In baptism we are anointed to reign with Christ over a new creation, but it is a reign of suffering servanthood, not of reckless force.

God has hung a star in our sky, and called us to follow it to the Christ child, who will receive the gifts that we bring and we will return changed to our homes.

Jesus calls us to resist the satanic desire to credit violence and disaster with meaning, and instead to acknowledge meaning and truth only in God’s suffering love and mercy.

The collapse of the institutional church and other social structures will be painful for all of us, but it is not ultimately a threat to mission of Jesus.

Suffering raises painful unanswerable questions, but Jesus leads us into a life where the sharing of our honest questions is part of shaping a community of healing and hope.

There is nothing wrong with an eager desire for a special closeness to Jesus. Jesus is eager to fulfil such desires, but warns us of the cost of sticking with him.

Children are a sign of the Kingdom, and our capacity to welcome them is a measure of our capacity to welcome the culture of God.

When we commit ourselves to following Jesus, we surrender all our personal aspirations and our share in the aspirations of our nation, in order that we might receive the life of Christ.

Jesus opens himself to the experience of those who are excluded and responds with a radical opening of the Table of God’s communion.