The Incarnation

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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

Forgiveness, not Punishment

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Actually, we might say that sin condemned and punished through retribution is sin condemned without hope for redemption. But sin exposed through righteousness, with the intent to restore the sinner to God, is grounded in the hope of salvation. So instead of saying that God inflicted the pain of the cross on Jesus as a penalty for our sin, we can say that the horrific nature of the cross exposed and condemned the gravity of our sin. After all, human beings are the ones who put Jesus to death, not God.

And remember, Jesus never said anything about coming to receive punishment for sin, but he said quite a bit about forgiving it. The righteousness of God in Jesus transcended the retributive aspects of the law and brought about our forgiveness – think about Jesus’ prayer for our forgiveness from the cross. In this manner, Jesus gave us his life and revealed to us the law of love that restores us to God and to each other. The Bible tells us that no greater love exists than this (John 15:13).

— Sharon L. Baker, Executing God, p. 134

Photo: Sunset at Blackwater Canyon, WV, April 23, 2025

Unshakably Good

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I told the crowd that two unwavering principles held at Homeboy Industries were the following: 1) Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and 2) We belong to each other (no exceptions). Then I posited: “Now, do I think all our vexing and complex social dilemmas would disappear if we embraced these two notions?” I paused, then continued, “Yes, I do.” And the entire audience exploded in laughter. I was startled. When the laughter subsided, I repeated quietly: “Yes, I do.”

These two ideas allow us to roll up our sleeves so that we can actually make progress. So that we can love without measure and without regret. So that we can cultivate a new way of seeing. We finally understand that the answer to every question is, indeed, compassion.

— Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging, p. 2.

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 27, 2025.

God Did Not Make Us to Hate Us.

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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

Opposite of Disgust

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We aren’t so much afraid of one another as disgusted – a much harder truth to face. We don’t resist the foreigner, orphan, and widow out of fear for our lives and well-being so much as out of a fear that they will contaminate us – change us into something we do not want to become. It’s a very human and very normal reaction but not one that Jesus seemed to follow. The Way of Jesus runs in the opposite direction of the exclusion that disgust instigates: it welcomes instead of rejecting, integrates instead of segregating, and loves instead of fearing.

–Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, Eucontamination, p. xiii

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 22, 2025

What Unity Means

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Unity is not a claim that we agree on all things, or even the hope of future agreement. Unity is a commitment to grapple with one another, rather than give one another up. Unity insists that we have something to learn from each other, and that our gifts can complement each other. Unity does not mean integrating smoothly or sweeping disagreements under the rug. Unity means curating spaces in which we can challenge one another in a spirit of love.

–Hanna Reichel, For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional, p. 100

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, November 10, 2025

Beloved

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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

Making Things Right

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The reason to do repentance work is not because you are BAD BAD BAD until you DO THESE THINGS but because we should care about each other, about taking care of each other, about making sure we’re all OK. Taking seriously that I might have hurt you — even inadvertently! even because I wasn’t at my best! — is an act of love and care. It is an opportunity to open my heart wider than it has been, to let in more empathy, more curiosity about how my choices or knee-jerk reactions have impacted you, have impacted others. To care about others’ perspectives. To let your experience matter, deeply, to me. To look at another person — or a community, or a team of people — and say: Where are you? What are you feeling and experiencing now, and how might I have (even unwittingly) brought you pain or difficulty? And to care about making that as right as I can.

It’s an act of concern. And facing the harm that I caused is an act of profound optimism. It is a choice to grow, to learn, to become someone who is more open and empathetic.

It’s also important to remember that sincere repentance work isn’t the same as self-flagellation — in fact, the latter can become a convenient way to stay stuck in inaction. We probably all know at least one person who, when told they have done something harmful, will go deep into their feelings and their reasons and the ways they were acting out of their pain, and they feel so bad and they know that it’s so not OK and on and on. And yet — they don’t focus on the needs of the person they hurt, and they don’t do the work of change.

— Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair, p. 58

Photo: Falls Creek Falls, Washington, June 16, 2025