We are constantly challenged. We are challenged by our jobs, our relationships, and our finances. I struggle with these internal conflicts but remind myself of the seeds God has planted in me. I remember the joy of love and caring and the pureness of the happiness that fills my heart. Of course, this doesn’t stop the annoyance of ConEd bills…
I came away from these passages thinking about desire. “What do you want?” I asked myself. It turns out that this isn’t a simple question. In fact, I came away stumped — I seemed to want everything and therefore could articulate nothing. Not a day goes by without…
We are living in trying and scary times. As I write this the government has been shut down for 30 days, all over a Wall to keep those out who desire to create a better and safer life for themselves and their loved ones. Children have been separated at the border from their families and kept in cages.
After long pondering the readings for today, two thoughts stayed with me: community and faith. In Luke, we hear about the community of teachers at the temple that drew Jesus to stay with them for three days until his parents found him. Perhaps he was thrilled at finding like minds for conversation and exploration.
Sometimes we are all called to take a close look at our complicity in systemic injustices that have benefited us — injustices which may not have been originally of our own making, but which we have enabled through our unwillingness to learn our own history, our silence, or even our active participation. Today’s passage from Daniel reminds us that…
On September 13, 1993, Yitzhak Rabin and Yassar Arafat shook hands after signing the Oslo Accord, a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. When Yitzhak Rabin was bitterly criticized for shaking Yassar Arafat’s hand, his response was that you don’t make peace with your friends, but rather with your enemies.
You don’t get out from under debt until you’ve paid the last penny, so why bother? The debts are too big. Paying off debt can be a purgatory, even when the end is in sight. It takes forever and you could still lose everything if you miss a payment.
“I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart!” says Psalm 138. My whole heart. My entire self, which includes the part of me who wants to determine my own version of justice for others, who gets super judgy, who thinks I am better than “the other.” That part of myself keeps me at a distance from other people and from my God. I can be my own worst stumbling block.
I was quite familiar with the story of Jonah and Nineveh, having encountered it in Sunday School, and even acted it out on a “muppet tour” with the Baptist youth group in the church in which I was raised.
What are we doing when we pray? Doesn’t God already know everything we could want to say? Does prayer change anything? What kind of deity is influenced by our prayers? A deity who waits until we ask correctly? What if others pray for the exact opposite result? (Think “politics, circa 2019.”) Maybe it helps to realize that…