Live the Story – Easter On the first Easter morning, the faithful women who gathered at the tomb were not ready to see the risen lord. They went to the tomb with their grief and their pain and they wondered “who will roll the stone away?” That stone represented their fear, pain and loss and […]
Many people like to view Jesus as an innocent victim of power and corruption, but what if we viewed his triumphal entry Jerusalem as an intentional choice to under go great suffering. Many scholars agree that Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, was just that, an intentional act. What does it mean for the love of God […]
In the journey towards healing and renewal, sometimes we find ourselves taking two steps forward, only to end up three steps behind. Life is full of challenges and obstacles. In the midst of life’s unexpected turns, and pains, hope can be found. Jeremiah offers words of hope to a people that were being exiled by […]
In the journey towards healing and renewal, we should always be weary of the temptation that we can accomplish life change on our own. While many people read John 3:16 to say that we must choose to believe in Christ on our own, choosing to believe is never as simple as a cognitive decision that […]
In any journey towards renewal, we have to, in fact, journey. We have to put one step in front of the other towards life change. God and others can intervene in our life, providing the opportunity for change, but we have a responsibility. Wesley theologian, Randy Maddox, speaks of this as God’s grace that is […]
In our journey towards renewal, out of the wilderness and brokenness of our lives and towards the new life God has in store for us, there comes the moments when someone, or something, intervenes and changes our trajectory for the better. Often times we fail to see how misguided we are, how lost in the […]
Any journey towards renewal begins in the wilderness, in our brokenness and our inability to find a way. Whether it is our health choices that bring about a medical problem or a sudden loss in our lives, as painful as it is, our journey towards healing and renewal begins in the wilderness. The hope we […]
Lent is a season of confession and renewal, preparing ourselves for the new life God has in store for us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Before we move into any process of renewal, however, we first have to recognize our need for it. We begin our journey towards renewal with our mortality, with our […]
Sabbath sounds great, but it is a habitual discipline. We have to train ourselves to keep Sabbath. The single greatest temptation to neglect the Sabbath is the temptation to think that our future depends on our extra effort. We are not our saviors, Jesus Christ is our savior. In the end we need Jesus, not […]
With Rest and renewal we create margins in our lives for relationship–relationship with friends, God and Family. Margins help us carve new time together, that we often neglect when we “spend” time together.