Weekly Email Archive

Mercy isn’t just about grand gestures or intervening in dramatic circumstances, however. It’s often found in the small, everyday moments of our lives.

Rather than viewing our limitations as restrictions, what if we saw them as providing clarity? Our constraints can help us prioritize what truly matters, focusing our energies on living meaningfully in the world.

This process might not always feel dramatic or obvious. Often, it’s in the quiet moments of reflection, the small acts of kindness, or the gradual shifts in our perspectives that we see the Spirit’s work.

By embracing vulnerability, mourning, and meekness, we cultivate a heart that craves God’s goodness, seeing more clearly our need for goodness outside ourselves.

It’s strange how our modern society mostly misses the powerful grace of meekness. History has shown us time and again that power, in the hands of self-first humans, corrupts.

God isn’t simply aware of our physical pain; he feels it viscerally, knowing, by first-hand experience, its jagged topography.

Guilt and self-recrimination can trap us in dark cycles of shame and self-doubt. But what if we could shift our approach to failure? What if God were offering us something fresh and hopeful?

As we turn our grief over to God’s gentle healing work, we may find that the fresh-torn earth left by these losses becomes the very space from which new, sometimes surprising growth emerges.

“The great mystery of God’s love is that we are not asked to live as if we are not hurting, as if we are not broken. In fact, we are invited to recognize our brokenness as a brokenness in which we can come in touch with the unique way that God loves us.”

Jesus himself graces mourning as honorable, commendable: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4, NIV). As Jesus unpacks what it means to participate in his Kingdom, he starts in places we wouldn’t expect. Poverty. Tears.

Jesus’ words present a revolutionary paradigm, challenging us to reimagine the very essence of what it means to be human: “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, NIV).

In a culture that often equates success with ‘having it all together,’ Jesus offers a paradoxical path to true abundance: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, NIV). It’s an invitation to abandon our pretenses and embrace vulnerability as the key to spiritual richness.