Topic: Salvation

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.

God’s visions of the future are often dismissed as unrealistic because our limited vision causes us to expect only more of the same.

Floods of hostility and violence sweep people away, but we are called to prepare ourselves to stand firm with Jesus, and be left behind as those who will not succumb to the angry flood.

Events of global chaos probably aren’t signs of God’s next big move, but we need to take seriously the call to live faithfully and courageously in the midst of them.

Being truly alive is a gift so extravagantly rich and wonderful that it can’t even be meaningfully contrasted with simply not being dead.

Before your past catches up with you, Jesus will try to blindside you with scandalous grace.

History will end with the unbridled joy of a loving shepherd who celebrates the neighbourhood filling up with dead losers who don’t deserve to be there.

The Transfiguration is not about the remoteness of God, but about a promise that through the exodus of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we might with him shine, transfigured, with the blazing glory of God.

The love of God seeks us out, even when we least deserve it, and then calls us to love others similarly.

When we’re met by the living Christ, we’re not invited to simply change our opinions about some things in life, and go on as we have before. We’re called, we’re changed, we’re transformed from top to bottom, from the inside out. Life can never be the same again.

We grow into the likeness of Christ as we model ourselves on him, and he is a model of growth rather than a model of static perfection.

Jesus wants to lift us beyond the deadening conformity that seeks to silence us and confine us to a stunted life.