First Christian Church, Conway, Arkansas

#PeacemakingInAction

“Given its root in the concept of shalom, peacemakers proactively intervene to reconcile broken relationships, to build healing and wholeness. Peacemakers don't avoid conflict. In fact, sometimes peacemaking creates conflict. We see that with Jesus. As the epitome of love, he wasn't always nice. At least not in the way modern people describe niceness. He burst into the temple and flipped over tables because poor vulnerable people were being exploited in the temple for profit.”

#PrayerInAction

“If we pray for the hungry but never give or volunteer, it's not prayer. It's a show, a performance. If we pray for world peace but never practice peacemaking in our own lives, it's not prayer. It's with wishful thinking because prayer is never just words. It's always a two part exercise. We pray, then we act. Prayer aligns our will with the divine guidance rather than replacing personal involvement.”

#MercyMatters

“More than something god does now and then, mercy is who god is. And it's who we are. Embedded in the DNA of the divine image created within each one of us. Mercy is not a condescending charity like a tip left on a restaurant table. Jesus took mercy from an act of proudly pitching a coin to a beggar and changed it into a whole attitude of life. An attitude that counters what we find in so much of the empire church today.”

#JusticeIsLove

“Two words summarize the logos, and justice or righteousness. In both the Hebrew and Greek, the words share the same root word and are essentially interchangeable. In a very general way, justice is the principle, righteousness is the behavior. Righteousness is justice enacted. And the root word for both means that which is right. When the Israelites got off the path god laid out, they understood right to mean might makes right. But the logos understands that which is right is love. Justice, and righteousness are qualities of love.”

#Meekness

“Meekness is the chosen way toward the earth, an earth on which we live in peace, where resources are shared, where everyone has enough. But first, a lot of people have to let go of a lot of stuff they think they own beginning with me. Pray with me. Lord, grant us grace to be truly meek and humble, to receive the earth and its bounty as your gift to all humanity to be shared among us all. Make that our campaign in the name of Christ”

#CompassionateMourning

“Jesus blesses those who mourn. Solidarity with the pain world without denying their own complicity. Grieving over all the survives is entirely different from hating and blaming others. When we mourn, we acknowledge our own pain and the pain world without demanding an enemy or someone blame. There is a world of disc may I know about whining. There is a world difference between aiming, embracing both God will do something about it.”

#KingdomOfHeaven

“Jesus describes a reordered society, a countercultural lifestyle, and calls it the kingdom of heaven. And notice, it is present tense. There's is the kingdom of heaven. will be. It's not a transactional thing. You display, you become poor in spirit, and then you inherit the kingdom. You're already in the kingdom. That's why you're poor in spirit. That's why you're humble. That's why you're not seeking external validation because you're already in the kingdom. You have already bought those values.”

#FaithInAction

“Faith is a both and act in which our present earthly life is our expression of faith the eternal. The beatitudes describe life after a genuine encounter with god. A transforming experience that replaces worldly values of empire and leads to fresh encounters with others. Encounters that reflect kingdom values of love, compassion, peace, justice, and the shared mission of joining god in healing the world.”

#SneakyResistance

“The Bible rebukes empire but in clever sneaky ways. Why didn't Shifra and Puah kill those babies? They said, the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women. They're so skirts before we can get there. Was that true? No. Maybe. Doesn't matter. They were heroic. Instead of blaming and feeling feeling impotent and finding excuses in the face of mass massive power, they did what they could. That's what heroes do. Thoreau reminded the world that I was just obeying orders is not a valid defense. God's great heroes throughout history have blatantly disobeyed unjust laws.”

#YokeOfGrace

“Liberation in Christ always leads to a new kind of binding, not back into enslavement, but into discipleship. Jesus offers us more than relief. Instead, he offers replacement. He takes the yoke of empire, performance, shame, legalistic religion off our backs, and he places his own yoke across our shoulders. A yoke built not of shame but of grace. A yoke intended not for obligation but for purpose and meaning. Not for control, but for communion.”

#BurningBushAtHome

“Aren't the problems at our doorstep, our burning bush? Do they not blaze with the heat of human need? And yet without being consumed in the flames, they just won't go away. Maybe it's out of the very problems we'd like to escape. The very issues of human need and injustice right here. Maybe it's there that we can most clearly hear our name called. clearly hear the divine voice. Take off your shoes right here. You're standing on holy ground.”

#MessiahOfLove

“I think Messiah is different for each of us. We hate people that we do, then we're probably doing it wrong. Jesus challenges us every time we try to place him in a box. And believe me, I need my assumptions challenged daily. We need the Messiah Jesus paints. The savior who doesn't bring a flaming sword of judgment, but a love so powerful that it absorbs everything everything. All the violence that we can possibly throw at it, including death itself, and then promises to transform it.”

#BridgeBetweenPeoples

“Between these two stories, Jesus says to the Syrophoenician woman, let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. First the children, then the dogs. First the Jews, then the Gentiles. Then she counters with, serve even the dogs under the table, eat the children's crumbs. With that bold reply, she shows courage and faith and her daughter is healed. I am convinced that Mark's placement of that story makes it a transitionary passage proclaiming Jesus as the bridge between Jews and Gentiles. The bridge that leads to a proclamation in Galatians, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free. There is no longer male or female for all are one in Christ Jesus.”

“``Casting your cares, our burdens, our anxieties on the Lord, it's not a quick fix. It's a lifelong discipline, which is why it's sometimes ineffective. If you do it only when you're in trouble, if you wait till you're desperate, maybe it's not too late, but you may not recognize the strength and the comfort God already has given you.”