(1) You gave away the holiness you obtained in your stewardship, so I took away your stewardship and the gifts by which you executed it, (2) and you had to remember what it was to not feel me with you, to fear that you were no longer a part of my work.
(3) But look: I’ve given your stewardship back to you, so be faithful. (4) Persevere, but don’t try to do more than you can. Allow yourself to be what and where you are—I don’t need speed, I need steadiness.
Read MoreWhen Jesus finished talking he looked around again, and saw that they were crying and they wanted him to stay. So he said, "I love you; your hurts are my hurts. Bring me the people who are sick, physically and spiritually and emotionally. Bring them to me, and I'll heal them, because I love you, and because you have the faith to be healed."
And as soon as he said this, the crowd went and found the people who were hurting and struggling, which had to be almost everyone, and brought them to him, and he healed every single one of them. Afterward, everyone who was healed and everyone who was whole bowed before him and worshiped him and gave him love in every way that they knew how.
And he commanded them to bring their kids, so they surrounded him with small children. Just a circle of all the kids, with Jesus in the middle. And when all the kids were there, Jesus asked the crowd to kneel down, so everyone was on the ground with the kids.
Read MoreBlessed are the people who don't have anything, because I'll give them everything I have.
Blessed are the people who are hurting, because I will send them comfort.
Blessed are the ones who take me at my word, even when they don't know what it means, because they will receive every good thing.
Blessed are the people who hunger for beauty and goodness and love and peace, because they will be filled with those things.
Blessed are the ones who struggle to forgive over and over, and succeed over and over, if only temporarily, because they will be forgiven.
Blessed are the ones with deep kindness, because they will see God's face.
Blessed are the people who get what peace really is and work to have it in their lives and communities, because God will call them His kids.
Blessed are the ones who get called names and have much worse things happen to them because they took on God's name, because good things are coming, and you get to be part of them.
So there are a couple of ways of going through the world: you can and follow after the things you can see and touch or you can try and pick your way after Jesus, even though you can't see or touch Him and the ways that you know Him will feel counterintuitive a lot of the time. Because when Jesus came He brought a new law, one that offered an escape from sin and death, and by this new law, you can feel your way after Him. But to make the law live—we are the life of the law—we have to follow it and fill it, we must walk by faith and hope, following after things we can't see or touch.
Because if you model your life after the things you can see and touch, then that's it, that's all you're becoming, physical and material and tangible. And those aren't bad, God is in those things too. But, like God, you're more than that. You are beyond the touchable, and you have to make place for those unseeable things in you, you have to follow after them to become them. As you fill the law with life, so it fills you with life and peace.
Read MoreIn the beginning (the very beginning, the Genesis) there was Christ, who was the organizing principle of the universe, reality itself. And He was with God, and was God, but also wasn't, in some confusing ways that people have been disagreeing about for a long time, because it's both somehow. Regardless, everything's being and beginning came through him; nothing was created without him (so every person you meet and particle you breathe is touched by divinity, is stamped with His mark). What He made was life, all life, life now and the possibility for eternal life, and light, all light, physical light and metaphorical light. There was darkness too, but the darkness could not overcome the light. This is a dark story sometimes, so we're going to tell you that upfront. The light wins.
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