At this particular time in history, we are inundated with numbers.
Over the past nine months, I have become exhausted by daily reports about the pandemic—new cases, deaths, hospitalizations, comparisons. Life has become magnified and intensified through totals and percentages. Somehow, these have the power to increase our fears and anxiety around our everyday lives and struggles.
These numbers actually represent intergenerational stories, and our Creator God is the source of each story. It might make a big difference if we focused on our stories and asked narrative questions rather than numeric questions.
Every person and thing we encounter has a story, but often our own story and our own filters, like beliefs and prejudices, hinder our ability to truly see others or even ourselves. A exploration of Luke 7 - Jesus Annointed by a Sinful Woman.
Should pastors be required to marry any couple that asks, including same-sex couples? Where is the line between religious rights & legal requirements? A look at civil and religious marriages, and an alternative way forward.
Exploring the story of an East Side Kid & the story of Lazarus. Did Jesus believe in "Better Together"?
My comforter yes. Yet I feel, I confess, a faint trace of disquietude in His presence.
Not because I doubt His love for me…but, rather, because I am certain of it.
And His love is at once tender and mild, yet ferocious and wild… because He, this man Jesus, is both Lamb of God, and Lion of Judah.
I believe that the church is the essential service in a broken world, and this is our moment. Will we take hold of this God-ordained moment, unlike any in our lifetime, to experience God working in a creative & redemptive way in our world?
We think— sometimes naively—that it would be a better world without darkness. On one hand, God does not have anything to do with darkness, but, of course, light is the contrast to the dark.
As we grow, we develop a relationship with the physical darkness around us and become aware of spiritual darkness. We often wonder if any of God’s light can touch us there.
Every day, port chaplains are reaching out to seafarers that arrive on ships to the Port of Vancouver, sharing the love of God and the Good News with them.
I believe having an “attitude of gratitude”, as the cliché goes, is a good character trait especially if inherent but in years past I struggled to accept it being labelled a virtue.
Virtue to my mind denoted an inherent morality that is absolute- requiring no prompting or trigger to reveal itself. Virtue, I thought, simply is. One is either, at heart, virtuous…or not.
If that is the case, gratitude would not be a virtue, as it is always predicated upon a favorable action initiated by another person, entity or circumstance.
Jesus' words, as quoted by Paul: “In everything I have shown you that by such hard work, we must help the weak and must remember the words of the Lord Jesus when he said, ‘To give is happier than to receive’” (J.B. Philips).
What does this actually look like in places like the Downtown East Side of Vancouver? How does this relate to Gratitude?
Often simple social situations give rise to awkward questions that, on the surface, seem innocent enough but, when examined more closely, actually reinforce the values of the Empire around us rather that the Kingdom of God.