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

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

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

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

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

Inside the Miracle of the Loaves and Fish

Blessing, God, Grace 0

I live my entire life inside the miracle of the loaves and fish. Nearly every sermon I preach feels incomplete and inadequate, but I preach it anyway, praying Jesus will fill in the gaps. My leadership is often imperfect and insufficient, but I lead to the best of my ability anyway and wait for Jesus to step in. The money I give away, particularly in response to acute human suffering, is never enough to meet the need, but I give anyway, hoping that, along with others, I might ease another’s pain. The image of a few loaves and some fish feeding a multitude is meant to encourage us all to give what we have when we know it is not enough. For reasons beyond our understanding, God consistently chooses to work through our imperfect, inadequate offerings.

–Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn To Be Brave, p. 117

Photo: Blackwater Falls, West Virginia, April 23, 2025

The Compassionate Heart of God

Atonement, Compassion, God, Grace, Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

What do I see when I look upon Christ in death with a pierced side? I see that a soldier’s spear has opened a window into the heart of God. As I gaze into the heart of God I discover that there is no wrath, no malice, no threat, no vengeance; only compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Mt 12:34). Jesus dies, not with a curse upon his lips, but with a plea for pardon. To see Christ upon the cross is to see into the very depths of the heart of God. Where once in our distant pagan past we imagined there lurked monstrous intent threatening harm, we now discover there is only tender compassion. On the cross we encounter a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. When we look through the riven side of Christ into the heart of God, we gaze upon a vast cosmos filled with galaxies of grace.

–Brian Zahnd, The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 33

Photo: Cherry blossoms in a heart shape, South Riding, Virginia, March 28, 2025

If God Can

Acceptance, God, Grace 0

We sing, Holy, Holy, Holy. We say, “Yes, yes, it is good.” We are energized by what we see. And our private darkness is no great surprise. Who cares? Who cares where I am on the ladder of perfection? That’s an egocentric question. “Where am I?” “How holy am I?” become silly questions. If God can receive me, who am I to not receive myself – warts and all?

–Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 105

Photo: Buds and blue sky, South Riding, Virginia, March 21, 2025

Finding the Lost

Acceptance, Compassion, God, Grace, Redemption 0

We have been unwanted, rejected, sent away with anger or with sadness at our rebellious streak. We have seen both glory and starvation, both beauty and pig pens, and we are coming home footsore and heartbroken. And before the words are out of our mouth, before our perfect speech is performed, God is cloaking our dirty shoulders in the best robe, slipping a ruby ring on our work-worn fingers, cleaning off the pig slobber to slip sandals on our feet, and declaring: I am so sorry you had to go, and I am eternally glad to have you back again.

— Emmy Kegler, One Coin Found, p. 8-9

Photo: Snow and lake, South Riding, Virginia, February 12, 2025

God of Second Chances

God, Grace, Redemption 0

If God desires to continue the work of reconciliation up to the last second, how can we protest? A sermon I heard as a new Christian put forth one of my favorite images of God as a God of second chances, a God who never gives up on us, who pursues us like a hound of heaven, always offering opportunities for repentance and reconciliation. Why wouldn’t God offer that same invitation on that final day? Why would God’s work of salvation end just because someone’s body dies? The work of Jesus must still be effective after the end of time or even after time runs out.

— Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell, p. 123

Photo: Iggelbach, Germany, June 20, 2024