Category: Teachings

Superman Messiah

How often in our preparations for Christmas do we forget to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ? While the prophet Isaiah prays that God will tear open the heavens and come to us, Jesus instead comes humbly, in ways we least expect. How can we be alert and attentive this Advent season so we don’t miss when Jesus comes among us?

The End of Lament

In times of trauma and grief, it feels like all the structures that keep our lives stable have been stripped away. But as we enter into the process of Lament, those structures begin to reemerge. It’s not daylight yet, but we can begin to sense that the long night of our grief is ending. Hope draws us together and invites those voices who have long been silenced to be front and center.

The Shadow Self

We build our lives around all kinds of things that make us feel secure, in control or valuable. But these things cannot give us the meaning and purpose we crave. In Lamentations 4, we see God strip these things away from the people of Jerusalem that they might return to worshipping God alone. How can we return to God before our own idolatry ruins us?

Dust in My Mouth

When do we stop praying for healing? What does solidarity look like with those who are hurting? Artist and theologian Katie Fisher shares from Lamentations 3. Putting dust in our mouths is at once an act of solidarity and a declaration of hope.

When God Gets Angry

What does it look like when God gets angry at us? Lamentations illustrates that God’s anger is God giving us what we want – life apart from God. How can we learn to see God’s anger as an aspect of God’s love – and an invitation to life?

Sitting with Grief

Grief is uncomfortable. In the face of tragedy, no words are sufficient to salve our pain. Yet in the face of others’ pain, we find ourselves offering platitudes and speaking for God so we can avoid their pain. But Lamentations 1 is a funeral dirge. We hear the woman’s honest, unflinching cries of pain and see the prophet join her, offering nothing but his presence. How can we learn to be honest about pain so we can begin the process of reorientation?

What Lament Looks Like

We avoid pain and grief as much as possible. When faced with someone else’s grief, we avoid or offer platitudes. But the book of Lamentations invites us to sit with grief, to enter into the prophetic process of Lament. In this series, we’ll explore how to grieve and how to be a friend to the grieving. Ultimately, we’ll see how the process of lament invites us to be agents of healing in the larger world.

Satan

We struggle to offer grace to people we feel don’t deserve it – which is, ironically, exactly who needs grace. Uncovering the true biblical origins of Satan helps us come face to face with this graceless impulse. It turns out, refusing to extend grace to others is what makes us truly Satanic. How can we choose to be a grace-filled people?

Judas

We tend to end up in echo chambers, surrounded by people who look and think a lot like us. The danger of this is that we don’t learn how to be challenged. The spiritual consequence is that we end up missing God – imagining God in our own image rather than learning to let God challenge us. Judas illustrates the reason we need to learn to be vulnerable, to open ourselves to strange friendships.

Jezebel

We work to strike a healthy balance between faith, family, work and all the other elements of our lives. But Jezebel’s story shows us that God doesn’t ask for balance; God asks for allegiance. How can we seek God first – and why is that good for everything else in our lives?