Isaiah 65:17-25

God has shown up in our lives through Sunday school teachers, and friends, and winter jackets, and Thanksgiving pies. Now we get the opportunity to continue this great circle of sharing

Job 19:23-27a

Before any social or material change to his circumstances, and before anything concretely changes in his life, Job’s redemption comes in the form of an authentic articulation of his inner life.

Romans 13:8-14; 14:1-4, 7-10

We join the Church today in remembering our mortality and that we die in the same manner that we were born: held in love, shepherded by the Lord of all, and part of a communion of saints that is far bigger and more beautiful than we can ever grasp.

Luke 18:1-8

We come to realize that just as we petition God as that widow, so too does the Spirit petition us, asking our unjust hearts to joyfully acquiesce to hope.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Once we shake up the etch-a-sketch, and we accept the reality of our circumstances, that’s when we get to have fun. Try drawing a new image, in a new style, with a different story. You can use that image you drew to give inspiration to the next; our dreaming was practice for the new dreams ahead of us.

Matthew 25:31-46

One of the most unexpected divides in this story is between those who were trying to discern which people were “deserving” of grace and those who were extravagantly indiscriminate in their care for others.

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Our lives are always making a confession of what is valuable to us. Will our lives make a good confession—that virtuous, loving, faithful, patient, gentle confession? Or will we miscalibrate our sense of what is valuable?

LUKE 16:1-13

[Today's] parable stands out from the others, because it shows us that money can also be used to sculpt new relationships, mend the breaches of our community, and give unexpected freedom to those who are burdened.

DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20

In the exodus from Egypt, in wandering in the wilderness, in observing the sabbath, in building the homes of God, and in prophesying against injustice, we see that choosing life places us on a path that is anything but straightforward; and we see that choosing life requires choosing it again and again.

Deuteronomy 24:17-18 and Jeremiah 2:4-13

The Hebrew people are commanded to communally remember the traumas of their ancestors, not for the sake of white-knuckled self-determination, but for the sake of their communal wholeness.

Ephesians 4:1-6

We this child go into the care of the Spirit, who will guide him, teach him, bring him to unexpected places, and bring him back to the unique image that God has placed within him.

Luke 12:32-40

Christ will not come again as a militaristic punisher. Christ will come again as a guest from a wedding banquet — Christ will come from a place of abiding joy and unmeasurable love.

Luke 11:1-13

Empathy is the easy part of the Lord’s Prayer! The hard part is... knocking day after day, seeking day after day, petitioning God day after day, when fixes don’t miraculously show up.

Galatians 6:1-16

Paul writes to the church of Galatia about the obsession to be right and its close bedfellow: the obsession to gain power over others. But Christ’s crucifixion gives us a very different set of rules and affections, ones which will surely lead us to plant seeds for tomorrow.

Luke 9:51-62

Let the dead bury the dead, and let’s start making room for the living. Everything depends on plowing a furrow ahead, getting ready for the Spirit’s seeds of hope, and anticipating a harvest that our children and grandchildren will reap.

Romans 5:1-5

God is so big, that even our faith—our very salvation—is an act of God... It is the faith of Jesus Christ which brings us into righteousness and peace.

Acts 2:1-21

The Spirit pours out flames upon each of us, not for the sake of growing our finances, or for the sake of larger membership, but for the sake of our neighbors. We’re not a cargo freighter at sea; we’re a dinghy on a lake, and when we open our sail, can easily catch the wind of the Spirit.

ASCENSION OF THE LORD ∙ Acts 1:1-11

These disciples are rubbernecked to heaven — to a spiritual event of the past, and a ministry of the past, and their ways of the past. In trying to figure it out, they forgot about Jesus’ words: “To Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5

The church has never, ever, ever been called to tune out. It has been called to be tuned-in, with a heart and set of eyeglasses that give it a different lens: a bifocal faith.

Acts 11:1-18

Peter saw everything he was taught to avoid, and everything he was taught to reject, coming down in a sheet. He was being called by God to support and love Samaritans and eunuchs and Romans and foreigner gentiles. He was being asked to transgress the boundaries he formed and the lines in the sand he drew.