To Win Us Over

Atonement, God, Jesus, Love 0

Jesus did not die in order to win God’s love for us, but to win us over with God’s love. God’s love went to the limit for us, dove into the depths of the human condition, suffered the consequences of our sin by dying a terrible death as an innocent man. And in the midst of that suffering love, Jesus revealed the greatest love of all — forgiving his enemies and praying to God to do the same. Through the incarnation, God took on human flesh and gave human flesh the life of God.

— Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 147

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 16, 2026

Power to Love

Forgiveness, Healing, Jesus, Love 0

Just as Middle-earth could not be saved, only enslaved, by the Ring of Power, so Christianity cannot save the world by political power; it can only be corrupted by it. Jesus Christ crucified is the everlasting indictment on those who forsake the way of the cross to reach for the ring of political power. The power we are promised by our Lord is the power of the Holy Spirit – the power to love, forgive, and heal. If we try to wield the Ring of Power (or Caesar’s sword), it will only corrupt us.

— Brian Zahnd, The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 97

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 16, 2026

Too Busy Loving Us

God, Love 0

Part of the quest is to be freed from everything that is not God. Eckhart thought we should rid ourselves of the irrelevant stuff, the tired views of God and religious language that block the pores of our soul. Richard Rohr says that your image of God creates you. Our God is self-effacing. We aren’t. This may be one of the reasons why we have such a hard time connecting to the God of love. God is not needy. We are. God does not long to be liked. We do. God is never fishing for a compliment. That’s our thing. Homies are endlessly insisting, for example, that everything happens for a reason. God is behind every reasonableness and everything unreasonable. When the opportunity affords itself, I will tell homies that God is too busy loving them to have any time left for orchestration. Sometimes we are saddled with an image of God that does not create us in God’s image.

— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 17

Photo: Burnside Farms, Nokesville, Virginia, April 7, 2026

God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us

Beauty, Bible, Delight, God, Love 0

God is not so small-minded or vindictive as to make people in order to just . . . hate them. I mean, look at the sheer multitude of galaxies in the universe. The membranes of butterfly wings. The way a toddler’s teeth make the most crooked and sublime smile when they laugh. The dreamer-upper of these things isn’t an asshole. I just don’t buy it. The Bible doesn’t sell it, either; while full of challenging and complex stories that do dip into the lament and wrath of God, scripture on the whole has an undercurrent and over-arc of God’s delight in God’s people.

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

Photo: Goslings, South Riding, Virginia, May 8, 2026

A Lover, Not a Dictator

Acceptance, Forgiveness, God, Love 0

Everything belongs. God uses everything. There are no dead-ends. There is no wasted energy. Everything is recycled. Sin history and salvation history are two sides of one coin. I believe with all my heart that the Gospel is all about the mystery of forgiveness. When you “get” forgiveness, you get it. We use the phrase “falling in love.” I think forgiveness is almost the same thing. It’s a mystery we fall into: the mystery is God. God forgives all things for being imperfect, broken, and poor. Not only Jesus but all the great people who pray that I have met in my life say the same thing. That’s the conclusion they come to. The people who know God well – the mystics, the hermits, those who risk everything to find God – always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found to be an abusive father or a tyrannical mother, but always a lover who is more than we dared hope for. How different than the “account manager” that most people seem to worship.

— Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 130-131

Photo: Irises, South Riding, Virginia, May 2, 2026

Standing in Solidarity

Community 0

A core vocation of the church is to stand in solidarity with the stigmatized and disgusting – remembering that it is not the people who are disgusting, but society who is disgusted. Like our Lord, we should be “reckoned with the lawless” (Luke 22:37) such that at every stage of the disgust cycle, the church is standing with the stigmatized and is leveraging any power, privilege, or influence it has on their behalf, fully knowing that this means casting our lot in with a targeted and scapegoated community.

— Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. 192

Photo: Great Blue Heron, South Riding, Virginia, April 24, 2026

Finding Enchantment Here

Beauty, Delight, Grace, Inspiration 0

Here’s our problem: it’s easy to experience enchantment on vacation. Anyone can feel a bit Celtic visiting Ireland or Wales. Anyone can feel closer to God on a beach or hiking in a national park. I don’t want to dismiss the restorative, spiritual magic of these beautiful places. We need these natural wonders and how they help us find God in nature. Redwood forests are life changing, inspiring, and holy. So is Llanddwyn Island. But if we only experience the enchantment of the natural world on vacation, I think we’ve missed the lesson the Celtic saints were teaching us. West Texas, where I live, is a long way from Wales. And way less enchanted, in the opinion of many people. Tumbleweeds aren’t as magical as shamrocks, I guess. But no matter where you live, the encouragement of the Celtic saints is this: enchant the place where you find yourself, right where you are standing. “Lord of all places,” the Celtic Christians prayed, “how good you are to praise.”

This is an enchanted world. God is the “Lord of all places.” In West Texas, in Wales, and where you are sitting right now. So let’s all declare, like Jacob, that our place – right here, right now – is the gateway to heaven. No matter where you find yourself, in sunshine and in rain, the grace of God enchants the day.

— Richard Beck, Hunting Magic Eels, p. 194-195

Photo: Yellow iris, South Riding, Virginia, April 24, 2026

Power With

Compassion, God, Jesus, Love 0

But Jesus gave up power and privilege to stand in solidarity with humanity. In this way, the Spirit of God sets aside power-over in favor of power-with for the sake of justice. Where power-over is marked by dominance, coercion, and control, power-with is marked by collaboration and cocreation. It is a power rooted in collective action and relationship. A God who invites us to “argue it out” is a God of power-with, power shared. This God is dynamic: one who feels, who responds to our pleas, and who can be accessed by humans. This is a God many of us were not introduced to but had to discover on our own.

— Kat Armas, Sacred Belonging, p. 62

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 3, 2026

Everybody Is Invited.

Compassion, Jesus, Universalism 0

Salvation is not about choosing the right theological beliefs to avoid hell. It’s about recognizing the goodness and divinity in the despised “other” and joining in on the party God is throwing, where everybody is invited. Jesus never tells people they need to change their doctrine or convert to another religion in order to be saved from hell. Jesus doesn’t defend theology, he defends humanity of the vulnerable and the marginal. Jesus doesn’t explain the one correct statement of faith to his disciples; he meets real human needs, while calling out religious leaders for the hypocrisy of caring more about dogma than justice and mercy.

Hell is not a good Christian doctrine because it makes it impossible to show up in relationships with others like Jesus did. The spirituality of hell excludes and others people; Jesus includes the “other” and shows us that we are all more similar than we thought. We are connected, whether we are aware of it or not. Refusing to see this – that is hell. The true hell is exclusion and denying our shared belovedness. It is living in the delusion of superiority and separation. It is refusing to join the banquet where everyone is invited.

— Brian Recker, Hell Bent, p. 58-59

Photo: Tulips, Burnside Farms, Nokesville, Virginia, April 7, 2026

Practicing Lament

Prayer, Trust 0

Practicing lament in the more common frustrations and less severe sorrows not only brings comfort but also develops a fluency in the language of loss. The heart behind this book is to help you discover the grace of putting lament into practice in ways that fit with all the pains of life. Regardless of what is causing you sorrow, let me encourage you to keep lamenting. Keep turning to God in prayer. Keep complaining. Keep asking. Keep trusting. In the same way that working a muscle trains it to carry greater weight, the spiritual exercise in lament prepares us for future hardship.

— Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, p. 163

Photo: Bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, April 3, 2026