Thirty Seconds or Less

The truth is simple: only love will give our lives any meaning at all, any substance, love as service, love as justice, love as grace and forgiveness, love that is living in the world for others.  Download the full episode The post Setting the Frog Free appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

The truth is simple: only love will give our lives any meaning at all, any substance, love as service, love as justice, love as grace and forgiveness, love that is living in the world for others.  Download the full episode The post The Day After appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

A part of what we remember on Good Friday is that God suffers with us even to the point where God feels the absence of God, when Jesus says, “My father, why have you forsaken me?”  Download the full episode The post God Knows what it Feels Like appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

On that night long ago, Jesus knew this was the last time he would be surrounded by his closest friends. These were his final hours as a free man. Soon he would be arrested, tried, and hung on a cross. In the glow of the candlelight he knelt and showed us once more how to... The post By Example appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  Download the full episode The post I Am Thirsty appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

And if there is a God and God is not finished with us, if there is a God then the human word is not the last word. God is.  Download the full episode The post Changed for Good appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

You may not hear God speaking but can you feel God moving?  Download the full episode The post Finding God in the Silence appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

We need the Jesus of Holy Week to teach us that you can never be perfect enough to avoid rejection.  Download the full episode The post The Rejects appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Anger is the joyful noise that makes the ears of the powerful perk up because it is a sign that the new life is not yet here but maybe it’s just around the corner.  Download the full episode The post The Space to Feel appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

It’s easy to deny reality when you don’t look below the surface.  Download the full episode The post Ever Before Me appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

You are a child of God and by nature of being a child of God, you are a priest.  Download the full episode The post The Order of Melchizedek appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Broken hearts don’t get fixed. They become the soil for a new heart to grow.  Download the full episode The post A Meditation for the Brokenhearted appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Like a grain of wheat falls into a compost pile, Jesus falls into the earth. The damp and still and timeless earth. The quiet earth, accept for the faint percussion of the blind critters who tiptoe over the beads of transforming matter.  Download the full episode The post I Love Compost appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

God is inclining us as new covenant keepers to look for these holy moments all around us.  Download the full episode The post Holy Moments appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

The transformation of our spiritual lives during Lent or at any other season of the year is not focused on us. God is at the center of the story. And the healing justice, the lavish generosity, and unfettered welcome is always the gift God has for us.  Download the full episode The post Climbing with Zacchaeus appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Even as we go through this trial and suffering and our nation’s life is laid down, I invite you to look for new signs of life inspired by divine minds that are emerging. Take a moment in your own life and within the news, not just to see the crucifixion, but to recognize and commit... The post Lenten Time in America appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

What kind of discipline or habit could you live into for the rest of Lent and beyond that empowers you to dig deep into your identity as a beloved child of God?  Download the full episode The post A Beloved Child of God appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

“Life of the ages” and “life abundant” are two ways of saying the same thing. One isn’t after you die and the other before you die. Both are ways of describing a whole, healthy, overflowing, liberated life in this life.  Download the full episode The post For God so Loved the World appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

The night is over and it is time to meet the day. It is time to know the deep rhythms of our soul’s distinct time, to tune into the tempos and patterns of our own communities, to pay attention to the timbre of our political moment, and to arise and respond with faith and courage.... The post Wake Up appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

If I’m going to attribute every stroke of luck, every gratuitous offering of grace, every open parking space divine intervention, then don’t I also have to assume that the same hand is at work, or choosing not to work, in every illness, every natural disaster, every delay on the 1 train?  Download the full... The post Praise the Lord? appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Our job, before doing anything, is to pray with and for the people. I wonder what it must have felt like to be Moses. Moses was also running from bondage to freedom. Moses was also susceptible to serpent bites. But he displays a certain level of calm in this passage. Moses doesn’t try to rush... The post Who Is This God? appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

This is the upside down kingdom. We must come to the end of ourselves. We must be cracked open to our own sin and the pain of the world in order to begin to allow God’s kingdom to enter in, to redeem us, to redeem the world. It begins with that undoing.  Download the... The post The Upside Down Kingdom appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

So what will we pray today? Will we pray with our hands, our feet, our breathing? Will we pray with our most colorful language or in the silence of this train ride?  Download the full episode The post God Hears You appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

We need a theological whip where drive the arrogance out of our spirits.  Download the full episode The post Ministry vs. Money appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Will we in this century, not yet two decades old, beat swords into plowshares? Banish the bullets and silence the deafening roar of handguns and AK-whatevers? Will the color of our skins and the content of varying cultures continue to divide? Will our unity, which is of God, find expression in our fractured lives of faith?... The post Join the Movement appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

The one I follow, Jesus, Immanuel, is marked as a radical lover of the lowly, marked as a revolutionary threat to power and ultimately, because of these things, marked like a tree for cutting down with that crude orange plastic ribbon./blockquote>  Download the full episode The post Marked appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

What would it mean for us to shut out all the words, even for just, say, fifteen minutes a day this Lent? To listen only to the heavens? To immerse ourselves in silence? To tune our ears to the still small voice inside each one of us?  Download the full episode The post The Heavens Are Telling appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

What do we sacrifice today for the idols that we worship? Who do we sacrifice today for the idols that we worship? The post I Think We Have Some Work To Do appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

It is here, in the healing of our souls, that we must begin. For in order to heal the brokenness of our world, we must first tend to the brokenness in our own lives.  Download the full episode The post A Season of Slow appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.

Perhaps all of our talk about prayer and sacrifice and following Jesus is nothing more theological than a simple call to change.  Download the full episode The post For a Change appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.