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

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

The Sacred Dance

Faith, God, Guidance, Life 0

When we believe the divine wills something absolutely, we stop wrestling with the complexity of the world. It’s how dualism still thrives in religious spaces today. I’ve felt it in many church settings – the pressure to see my own will as something to be set aside, to understand my desires as inherently in conflict with God’s. What I wanted, thought, or felt was always considered at odds with the divine. It wasn’t a both/and but an either/or. Either God was at work or I was. This set up a relentless internal tension, not just with God but with myself.

But the more I immersed myself in Scripture, the more I saw that God isn’t at war with humanity. The stories we find there aren’t about a battle of wills but about a sacred dance – about God and humans moving together in harmony, creating something holy. This reframing shifted something deep within me, reminding me that the religious life isn’t a struggle for control but a movement of grace and love.

— Kat Armas, Liturgies for Resisting Empire, p. 105-106

Photo: Icy lake, South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026

Shame Removed

God, Grace, Healing 0

Eve is being suffocated by her shame, but God calls her out. And he doesn’t call her out to rub her face in it. He calls her out of the bushes, out of her shame, to offer his grace and remind her of his love. But it doesn’t stop there. To me, the most amazing thing about this whole story is what comes next. Not only does God call Adam and Eve out of their shame, he also removes it altogether.

— Elizabeth Garn, Freedom to Flourish, p. 136

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 19, 2026