'Hope' Tagged Posts
Toward Sunday
We’ll conclude our worship series, Way of Love, this week with reflection on the hope found in Christianity. Norman Wirzba writes, “Christian hope rests in the ultimate victory of love over hate, a victory that is signaled in Jesus’s own overcoming of violence and death with his resurrection from the dead on Easter” (Way of Love, 200). Way of Love Outline •Sept 11: Christianity as School in the Ways of Love. (Psalm 86.11, 1 John 3.14, 1 John 4.8) •Sept 18: Fall.…
Toward Sunday
We’ll continue our worship series, Way of Love, this week with reflection on the Christian story of fall & redemption. Norman Wirzba writes, “The way of love requires a transformation of the human heart and a reorientation of one’s life. To become proficient in the ways of love, we need a sympathetic and supporting community helping us all along the way. Christianity is best understood as a training ground in the ways of love” (Way of Love, 3-4). Way of Love Outline Sept…
Hope is coming
“Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves. We are able to trust that he will come again, just as Jesus has come into our past, into our private…
Triduum’s Period
“Two things are said to test the seamanship of a sailor: a storm and a dead calm. As we arrive on Holy Saturday’s far shore of the Triduum’s (the period of Holy Thursday through the Saturday before Easter) troubled waters, we have these kinds of testing back to back. Good Friday’s squall is followed immediately by Saturday’s stone-dead calm. The emotional roller-coaster of these two days mimics the ups and downs of the spiritual life. How are temptations, ethical challenges,…
Toward Sunday
We move into the final week of our Lenten series, Hope in Dying, by turning from reflection on the significance of Jesus’ death to holding questions about how we watch over others in love as they die. Please note the dates and times below for our Holy Week worship on Maundy Thursday & Good Friday. We would love help preparing and cleaning up our simple meal of soup, bread and salad for Thursday evening, April 2. If you are available…
Holding hope.
Holding hope is a practice we are called to work on every day as followers of Jesus. Right now, we hold hope for the community of Ferguson, Missouri, and for all of us even as we feel the deep pain and suffering of racial inequality. Once again white privilege takes hold of the justice system and the deep gulf between the police and those who are policed is exposed. This gulf has been formed over generations of discrimination and by…
Hope of Heaven
How silly: we stand on the porch of heaven a little uneasy, though eager, too, the heartfelt invitation in our hands, briefly admiring the pearly gates— amazing, really, the pearl, the craft, the lucent colors purling up the columns, the welcome warmth wafting from within— but then we turn to the hope at hand… and so— how silly, and how sad: we stand and fumble for the keys, and rummage anxiously, and dig around forever, searching, failing, grasping more, our…