This Good News which we cling to in hope is that, despite our restless and often fruitless seeking for meaning and belonging, God Himself sought us. God seeks, and God finds.
I regularly hear this phrase in my head and heart: Somebody has to tell them. Someone must speak this truth into their situation, and there are a lot of occasions when I wish it were not me.
The reality is Christ will come again with glory, to judge the living and the dead. We do our people and our communities no favor by hiding the truth of this coming Day.
On the one hand, forgiving as Jesus commands us feels impossible. But on the other hand, forgiving as we have been forgiven is the most natural thing in the world
This is not just a pericope about hereditary sin and actual sins, nor is it providing a pattern for prayer. It is fundamentally about God our gracious Father and His promise to hear us, answer us, and provide for us.
But it is not always helpful to create tidy categories of good and bad and to say, “Stop being ‘a Martha’ and do a better job of being ‘a Mary.’” That is a dangerous sermon to preach. In doing so, we can fall into the very thing we see Martha doing.