Sheep and Goats

Forgiveness, God, Jesus, Universalism 0

Also, notice that the sheep to the right of the shepherd are considered praiseworthy precisely because they do not think of the world in a dualistic way. They are sheep not because they were born as sheep but because they have chosen to respond to their neighbors in a very specific way. What grants them their identity as sheep i that they are precisely the kind of people who do not split the world up into sheep and goats….

The sheep respond to need and otherness with hospitality and love. They are sheep precisely because they are capable of recognizing a common humanity in their neighbors and having empathy for those who might be different from them or marginalized by society. They choose to cross the boundaries and break through the walls that might otherwise divide people – even the walls of a prison cell. Their “sheepyness” is defined by their refusal to accept the divisions of social or immigration status, health, wealth, or even (most ironically) the consequences of punitive justice.

Notice that the King does not say, “I was innocent and you came to prison to visit me.” He does not seem to care about the particular guilt or innocence of the one who is incarcerated. He simply identifies himself with whoever might be in prison, saying, “I was in prison and you visited me.” As the last detail mentioned in a series, the fact that sheep go to visit prisoners carries the most emphasis in the text. Caring for those who are imprisoned actually epitomizes what it means to be a sheep. Yet, some will argue that we are to understand this passage to be saying that God imprisons souls in a torture dungeon and withdraws God’s presence from them for all eternity! Are we to believe that God is praising the sheep for their enduring presence with those who are in prison, and at the same time, God withdraws God’s own eternal presence from those whom God sends to prison? If that were true, then Christianity would simply be a terrible religion worthy of our rejection, because the Christian God would be the biggest hypocrite of all.

— Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 98-99

Photo: Gray winter sky, South Riding, Virginia, December 31, 2025

Prayer Takes Time

God, Healing, Prayer 0

I wonder if God needs us to persevere in prayer simply because most of what we pray for will take a long time to realize. We pray for healing for ourselves and those we love, knowing that in most cases the process is slow. We pray for peace within our families or in the human family, and we know that peace isn’t readily attained and often comes at a dreadfully high price. We pray for justice, knowing that it is always hard-won and takes generations to accomplish.

— Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave, p. 176

Photo: Snow on frozen lake, January 1, 2026

Invited to Joy

God, Jesus, Joy 0

Jesus invites us to joy. The holiness to which we are called is to know joy in its fullness. We let ourselves be drawn to the Tender One whose face is unbridled joy. We are beckoned to this locus of joy, not a reckoning with the error of our ways but God saying, unabashedly smiling, “Get over here.”

— Gregory Boyle, Forgive Everyone Everything, p. 18

Photo: Cardinal, South Riding, Virginia, December 31, 2026

The Incarnation

Compassion, God, Jesus, Love 0

A God who not only understands but experiences hunger, thirst, weariness, joy, sadness, physical pain, growth, interpersonal relationships, intimacy, betrayal, offense, occasions for celebration, grief, and the full gamut of the human experience is a great deal different from a God who is content to sit on high while looking down low.

In the incarnation, we are confronted with a bizarre proposition. The God that existed before the beginning of time chose to walk among the people as one of their own. What was once thought of as imperceptible became a tangible reality that people could see with their own eyes. Converse with. Even touch. The incarnation suggests that God is indeed living. And, for some of us, all of this is a little difficult to square with a God who exists outside the boundaries of time and space.

— Trey Ferguson, Theologizin’ Bigger, p. 158

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2024

God Did Not Make Us to Hate Us.

Acceptance, Beauty, Compassion, God, Joy, Love 0

God did not make us to hate us.

God did not dream up the color yellow and craft the scientific art of making butter from milk and whimsically birth cumulus clouds just to . . . disdain a little girl who misunderstood the cosmic structure.

God did not count the hairs on our heads or the stars that would hang in the sky over billions of years just to resentfully accept desperate people begging to be spared from brutal torment.

I know this because maybe heaven isn’t a pit stop between Raleigh and LA, but heaven is all around us. Breaking in and barreling down walls and peeping up like dandelions in the asphalt. God would not be so creative and wily and beautiful all at the same time if God’s desire was punishment.

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

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 14, 2025

Beloved

Core Value, God, Grace, Love 0

The gospel – the good news – is that you are already fully loved and accepted. That’s the message of grace at the heart of Christianity. You don’t have to do anything to be loved. Not anything at all. The work is always to receive it, to believe it. You don’t need to “be saved” to be loved. Salvation is just a way of describing the moment we come to know and believe that we are already loved, that we have always been loved. And our belovedness is not inspite of who we are but simply because we are worthy of love.

— Brian Recker, Hell Bent, p. 45

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 4, 2025

Our Father

Calling, Community, God 0

When I pray this line of the prayer, I put a special emphasis on the word our as a way of reminding myself that God is not simply my Father, but he is the God and Father of us all. Whether others acknowledge him or not, he is still the Creator of all things, the Giver and Sustainer of all life. He is the Father of all humans. This seems particularly important in a world prone to polarization and divisions. God is not simply the God of Protestants but also of Catholics and Orthodox believers. God is not simply the God of conservatives, but also of liberals. God is not the Father of any one nation, or ethnic group, but the Father of all nations and peoples. He is not merely the Father of Christians, but the Father of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and even atheists and agnostics who don’t believe in him.

— Adam Hamilton, The Lord’s Prayer, p. 7

Photo: Burg Falkenstein, Germany, June 19, 2024

Start with Humility

God, Guidance 0

I would go so far as to say that any worship service that does not begin with a sincere and plaintive kyrie eleison had best be very careful. The plea for mercy at the beginning of many Christian worship services is a statement and a warning that we are moving onto holy ground. We most likely do not know what we are talking about when we speak of God, so we’d best start with humility. We all and forever need mercy. One wonders what our theologies and worship would look like if we always began with an honest statement of our not knowing the real nature of holy mystery.

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

Photo: Blackwater Falls, West Virginia, July 6, 2025.

Expansive Love

Acceptance, Compassion, God, Grace, Love, Redemption 0

I am found by a divine love that is expansive. Every time I have reached the edge of how far I believed love could go, I have found myself instead standing in the middle of where love has already been. Love is not up for in-groups and out-groups, for tents that can only stretch so far or tables that can only seat so many. Love keeps going. Love casts a wider net each time and drops itself down from the heavens burdened with uncleanliness to cry out, What I have called clean you must not call unclean. Love has no tolerance for intolerance. When the people of God told stories of exclusion, the men casting out their foreign wives and children, love wrote the story of Ruth, the foreigner as or more loyal than any woman of Israel.

— Emmy Kegler, One Coin Found, p. 176

Photo: International Rose Test Garden, Portland, Oregon, June 18, 2025