Jesus taught us to pray ”Thy kingdom come”. He also taught, “The kingdom is already here in your midst.”
How do you put those two together? Some emphasize one or the other.
Let’s explore what happens when you drop the letter “G” and think of a “Kin-dom.
I thought I knew the Apostles! The become of hundreds of millions who viewed “The Chosen.”
It enriched my appreciation for the scriptures and led me to a more prayerful understanding.
“Trash” or “Spam” filters are our first defense against unappreciated messages.
In some ways this is the equivalent of teenage “mother deafness” as we become interested in a world outside our home.
Thankfully, at some point, we mature to say, “As my mother always said…
Let’s explore human “God deafness.”
Is Labor Day the last hurrah of summer? The weekend to catch supposedly fantastic sales? A recognition of the dignity of work? It is all that and more!
Living with the Jesus of Interruptions. – How many times are you interrupted in the middle of your plans? Do you think of interruptions as annoyances … or opportunities encounter a body of Christ?
In Mark’s there are many ordinary we tend to skip over. But they are there for a reason. Mark subtly proposes them as signs of encouragement to the ordinary Christians under attack in Rome.
Mark, as any good pastor would, uses Jesus stories circulating in oral tradition to help a community understand how the gospel is “good news” … even in the face of catastrophe and persecution.
Nuns built America’s largest private school system , created America’s nonprofit hospital systems building over 800 hospitals, were some of America’s first feminists, are not strangers to dangerous situations.
Contrary to some common assumptions, Jesus is not the ultimate Answer Man, but more like the Great Questioner. We know that Jesus asked over 300 questions. He is asked 183. He only answers 3.
G.K. Chesterton wrote “original sin is a fact, an observable fact one can “see in the street.”
Are we friends with the Jesus who comes to us today in so many different bodies?
How many of them so we know and include among our friends?
Can we recognize our own blindness to the “hard sayings” that challenge us today?
There are all kinds of orthodoxy tests. We might even pass an orthodoxy oral exam. But how many can claim to actually lead lives reflecting this belief in crisis situations.
The Jesus Movement is rooted in Jesus’ experience of the love of God urging the neglected to become aware of their dignity! The Vincentian Embodiment of that movement is rooted in doing what Jesus did.