The Parish

Leah lived in a household marked by deceit, manipulation and competition. But she saw it through her gentle eyes and chose a different path.  

Apparently God doesn't cease to know our thoughts, but unfortunately we can cease to know Hers.

Healed people don't change the world, changed people do.

It is the details we dwell upon that make a story-the story we chose to tell.

We often think it's a miracle when we feel that God has heard us and responded, but what if for God a miracle is when we have heard his voice and responded.

What the Emmaus Road disciples thought they wanted was a conventional king on a throne of political power. What they got was broken bread on the Communion table.

Easter | A sense of wonder we feel in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world.

Good Friday with special guest Steve Kennedy.

Jesus isn't looking for palm-waving admirers willing to lay down a coat, he is looking for those who will lay down their privilege

The fragrance of love is even stronger than the stench of death.

Jesus doesn't offer a life that is happy and easy and safe. He calls us from our comfortable spectator places to take up our cross and follow him.

If we don't learn to have a healthy appreciation for how precious and sacred life before death is, how will we ever appreciate anything that comes after.

We follow Jesus not just so that we get to the right destination but so that, along the way, we can learn how we should walk.  

Jesus didn't endure the wilderness to spare us from it, but to show us how.

The peace message of Jesus is often misunderstood, yet central to his teaching.  That's why He will interrupt our concept of what peace really is and offer an alternative that leads to human flourishing for all involved.

If we find ourselves, in these fraught times, succumbing to a desire to hoard and take care of our own, we may find it helpful to recognize that what we have is not really our "own" but a gift from God, given so that we can share.

We choose to belong to each other—because it is together—not alone,  that we can witness what love can do and maybe catch a glimpse of just how big God is.  Community is our spiritual practice, not just a byproduct of it.

Jesus is bringing a subversive kingdom where those considered losers and outsiders are brought to the table and celebrated.  

The Christian mission was never to make the world more christian, but instead to make it more loving, and the way of Christ will show us how. Conviction Three: The rejection of world domination and Christendom and embracing influence not control

Jesus is what God has to say. If we treat the bible as a flat text where every verse carries equal weight then we either resolve those conflicts by making arbitrary decisions about what applies and what doesn't or we just stay confused. A Jesus-centered approach to scripture can help resolve the conflict.

Jesus is offering us a compelling way forward in a divided world.  Jesus is teaching us that instead of choosing a side we can choose a way.   Conviction one | We choose to follow Jesus not just worship him.

What if being the light of the world means taking a vital role in a silent movie?

What if God is not trying to heal the world for, us as much as heal the world through us. 

The message the shepherds were given about a baby in a cattle feed trough was vague and cryptic at best. They may have wished for a more detailed map but in faith they followed the sign they had been given and it brought them to Jesus.

Advent will teach us that we need search for the light of the world in these stories, so we know what it looks like in our own lives.

During the secular holiday season, it can feel as though we're expected to be happy all the time - have a holly, jolly merry Christmas!  But the message the angel brought to the shepherds on that first Christmas didn't offer happiness - it offered joy, which is a very different thing. 

The Advent story is showing us that something beautiful can come from the unexpected, even the misunderstood.  The journey might start with hope-but it will take us through surrender before arriving at peace.

Hope isn't a way to deny our current pain by envisioning a happier future. Hope is present in the messiness of our lives, giving us the courage for the next step forward.

By the time we begin to sing Christmas songs, and by the time the tree and lights are up, by the time Mary is showing, we are already in the middle of something.  The Magi have already left Persia heading east towards yonder star.  Let's be Honest.

The Greek woman with a sick child knew that in the cultural context Jesus and his disciples came from, she was very much an outsider. But she asked, and found that the abundance of Jesus' salvation could reach even her.

Jesus' invitation is to follow not to arrive, the transformation happens on the way.

We may think we are keen to learn new things about Jesus. But when those new things conflict with firmly held views, it may be hard to absorb them.

Sometimes the miracles we consume that look like our daily bread don't seem as big.  But they desire to nourish us best.

Herod is an archetype for materialistic political leaders but Jesus is bringing a different kind of kingdom

If people cannot see that God is with us, they aren't going to be able to see God is in us.  

Jesus brought transformative change to the lives of those he healed. But they weren't the only ones who were impacted by the healing.

Jesus doesn't see sinners, he only sees people made in the image of God.  Week two of But not my pigs.

What if making the world as it is in heaven requires my pigs?

If perspective is motivation's silent partner, then let's change our thinking.

When our faith is defined by Who we believe rather than what we believe, we can create a community that is diverse and yet harmonious.  

We need gestures that embody things that cannot be adequately expressed.  Baptism is a 'here, let me show you what I mean' kind of thing.  

Hannah was wounded by the words of those who stigmatized her for her childlessness. But then she met one whose words brought blessing and hope.

Spirituality is often seen for its faithfulness to a set of values and ideas behind us.   But faith is tethered by an invisible force that is guiding us forward not holding us backwards. Humanity and culture are adapting and evolving, faith by its nature is ahead of us, not behind us and change is apart of that.

David writes a song that doesn't allow the reality of God's love to diminish the reality of his present suffering... and a psalm that doesn't allow the reality of David's sin and distress to put an asterisk on God's love for him.

If you've ever been tempted to attribute the suffering you face in this life as evidence of God's hand against you, this ancient story of Naomi might be the story for you.

In a world that makes us forget we are all connected-this story offers us a stark warning, that in those moments when we don't think we are Able,....to not become a Cain

Hagar had great faith. But it was faith in what she imagined to be God's plan rather than faith in God's self.

This Psalm and the circumstances surrounding its writing offer us a glimpse of what Spiritual Resilience can look like.  Where our hope isn't rooted merely in what we are feeling, but in what we have come to know.

Hagar felt all but invisible in her world. Then she was found by the God who sees her.

The most spiritual moments in your life won't be when you feel God has shown up, but instead when you realize that God had never left.

David delighted in the fact that he was intimately known by God, but when it came to his enemies, he wasn't willing to look past the colour of their uniforms.