God Didn’t Make Me to Hate Me.

Acceptance, Delight, God, Joy, Love 0

So how do we melt away the fear?

I believe it begins here: by looking at the heavens, and looking at the dandelion in the cracks, and looking at scripture, and looking at God, and trying an older and wilder way of trust. It begins by saying: God did not make me to hate me; God made me to love me. God made me out of desire. God made me out of joy.

— Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail, God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us, p, xiii

Photo: Shadows of tree branches on frozen lake, South Riding, Virginia, January 30, 2026

Your Journey Matters.

Forgiveness, God, Grace, Redemption 0

Nothing will be wasted; all has been forgiven; nothing will be used against you. In fact, God will even use your sins to transform you!…

Your journey matters, and God’s covenanted love toward you is always unconditional and usually unilateral. If you accept this good news, the universe suddenly seems to be a very safe place.

Why do I believe that? Because I see that’s th way Jesus responded to everybody. When the Samaritan woman comes to him with five husbands (John 4:18), he doesn’t start by imposing his agenda. He receives her story. Morality is always inside a narrative, always inside a context. From that accepted starting place, he calls the soul forth. He doesn’t recommend that she go through an annulment process. He doesn’t check out how many commandments she has obeyed or disobeyed. Instead he makes her an apostle! He sends her out to advertise the good news to the neighboring village. That’s how Jesus received people. He received the story that was in front of him and oriented it toward light and freedom. That doesn’t mean he didn’t challenge it sometimes. But if Jesus is the revelation of the heart of God, that is very good news about the nature of God. You do not need to be afraid. You need not fear; your life will be honored and used in your favor!

— Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 129-130

Photo: Sunrise, February 11, 2026

We’re Not Merely Tolerated.

Acceptance, God, Love 0

God’s love results in invitation, welcome, and unification – a shared Life – where disgust would allow only for violent rejection. All of that might sound like condescension, and certainly there is a robust Christian tradition encouraging us to embrace humility and to understand ourselves as utterly dependent on God’s grace, but in fact there is nothing of tolerance or condescension in it at all. When we operate out of Love, the whole higher/lower distinction dissolves and disgust is destroyed, killed, and reborn as its own opposite: the longing for unity. God will not tolerate union and shared life with Their creation for even a single moment because tolerance is far too weak to bridge the gap. God desires, embraces, died for, and delights in, union and a shared Life with Creation. We are not tolerated by the Divine, we are celebrated. Love is the only force in existence which could possibly bridge the infinite Gap between creation and Creator, but Love will have nothing of gaps at all; what Love wants is unity with the Beloved. When Love acts, the gap is not bridged but erased. The father in the parable of the prodigal son does not condescend to or tolerate his son; the Father runs to him, embraces him, kisses him, and throws a party. Lovers delight in their union.

— Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. 175-176

Photo: Shadows of tree branches on snow, February 14, 2026

Invitation of Lament

God, Prayer 0

Lament begins by turning to God in prayer. We’ll discover the supply of grace that comes as we take the step of faith to reach out to God. Lament invites us to turn our gaze from the rubble of life to the Redeemer of every hurt. It calls us to turn toward promise while still in pain.

— Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, p. 29

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, February 14, 2026

Repentance as Self-Care

Growth, Healing 0

The work of repentance is, in many ways, the work of looking outside ourselves, looking with an empathetic eye at what we have done, letting it matter to us, and trying earnestly to figure out how we can both meaningfully address it and ensure that it never happens again. This is, in some ways, an act of tenderness, of extending ourselves to care for others, of giving ourselves the time and attention we deserve to grow, of investing in our own learning and capacity to heal.

Because repentance is, I believe, in part, a kind of self-care. When we do the work, we give attention to our own broken places, our own reactionary impulses, our own careless ignorance. And it’s a way of saying, “Hey, self, you need some attention. Let’s give you some help becoming the kind of person you want to be.”

— Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair, p. 59

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 10, 2026

My Wild Mediocrity

Core Value, God, Life, Love 0

God, give me satisfaction in the trying.
Give me joy in the never-quite-there.
Grant me peace in my unsettled heart
for my wild mediocrity.
Help me smile back
at the truth that no one,
not one, knows perfection but you.
And you already looked at this
messy creation
at the beginning of time
and pronounced it pretty darn good.

— Kate Bowler, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! p. 79

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026

Mercy to All

Forgiveness, God, Grace, Healing 0

From that point on, poor Jonah is simultaneously angry, lamenting, and praising Yahweh for four full chapters. His problem is that he cannot move beyond a dualistic reward-punishment worldview. Jonah thinks only Israel deserves mercy, whereas God extends total mercy to Jonah, to the pagan Ninevites who persecuted Jonah’s people, and to those “who cannot tell their right hand from their left.” To make the story complete, this mercy is even given to “all the animals” (Jonah 4:11)! The world of predictable good guys and always-bad guys collapses into God’s unfathomable grace.

— Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things, p. 86

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026