On International Women's Day, let's celebrate little known women of the Bible. For centuries, people have abused the Bible in order to oppress and quash the rights of women. They've done their best to diminish and even obscure the powerful roles women played in our scriptures. Who knows how many stories were simply excluded from the canon by the men who curated it? Here are a few stories of women ...
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Maybe this horrific tale that we've tried to turn into a children's nursery theme actually does have something good to tell us about who God is. Maybe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elVp0X3YvSE&t=10
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This is a text version of the story I told at the opening worship this past week's Arts, Recreation and Worship Conference. You can find video at the bottom of the post. The whole story--our story, our faith story--begins and ends with water It all begins with the spirit of almighty God hovering over the water—an inky, black, watery abyss. Water left to its own devices will create chaos and wreak ...
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https://open.spotify.com/episode/4eAitdqpo0GjlsaliGL5Vg?si=ae02d7a935a14a2e Here we get our first glimpse of the disciples gathered together after the resurrection. All in all, not a very pretty picture. Near the end of his life, Jesus had carefully prepared his disciples to be a devoted and confident fellowship of faith. They were to be a community of love whose doors were always open and the welcome mat always out, but here we find them barricaded in a ...
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If you're not familiar with the story of Jacob and Esau, you can listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3BLexsGYvmW2cASToRpzvQ?si=zhy0P92PTwmAazGIVtBd2Q&dl_branch=1 To recap: Jacob has been fighting to be the first-born or at least receive the benefits of the first-born since he and his brother were in the womb. Finding his brother in a weak moment, Jacob trades Esau a bowl of stew for Esau’s birthright. Knowing that this not really kosher, Jacob and mom, Rebekah, concoct a ...
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The story of Hagar is one of the most offensive stories in the Bible. Here Abraham has been promised by God that he will be the Father of a great nation. Promised by God. But since both he and his wife Sara are so old, Abraham decides he’ll hedge his bets and try to reproduce with one of his slaves, Hagar. And yes, such practices were customary in those days, ...
Read Morehttps://open.spotify.com/episode/4GnyCtRBe02WyzcMZgregl?si=N2f6RfklSxi9yqYl_kbLYg @media screen and (min-width:768px){.ugb-f9f5329.ugb-spacer{height:12px}} This is not a fun story. It doesn't make Sarai, Abram or even God come off looking very good. Hagar, the oppressed concubine pregnant with her master's son, is the hero of the story. We've all had bad days, but I think we can agree that Hagar's bad day is one of the worst. And it is on this day that she encounters God...a God who doesn't even ...
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I've loved this story for awhile and was delighted to find that someone made it into a short film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9N8OXkN0Rk The story is a bit of the reverse of the Road to Emmaus story--where the disciples didn't recognize that their fellow traveler was, indeed, Jesus. Perhaps we have to be on the lookout to find a God who is on the loose in the world.
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Was that your first thought this morning? "I'm gonna encounter the living Lord Jesus Christ." Probably not. And yet, we spend an awful lot of our time looking for Jesus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xkaSNQJ_3o We spend a lot of time looking for Jesus, but it's often in very holy, very specific spaces and places. We don't go out into everyday life expecting to see Jesus...and I think that's why we so often miss him. ...
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It's one of the many cool things about the Bible. Even the stories we've heard again and again and again still have new things to say to us. Listen with new ears to the story of the Good Samaritan and to what I learned from it this go-round. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7pLNTGD2UaSbAcEAc5i39O?si=CFVcXP79RbeqCyZgZNubmA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dxf0Jpsm6Q
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