An online presence for St Francis Anglican Church, Tairua, NZ
“Jesus, a prophet in his own country.” This is where we find him and see how he stands. All were speaking well of him. There was amazement! “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
Here was an easy opportunity for him to go with the flow; to enjoy being a valued part of his community. But he speaks out truths they are not prepared to hear; truths that sting and enrage them. [To read more, click on the title.]
During this brief liturgical season between Christmas and Lent, we’re invited to leave miraculous births and angel choirs behind, and seek the love, majesty, and power of God in seemingly mundane things. Rivers. Voices. Doves. Clouds.
In the Gospel stories we read during this season, God parts the curtain for brief, shimmering moments, allowing us to look beneath and beyond the ordinary surfaces of our lives, and catch glimpses of the extraordinary. Which is perhaps another way of describing the sacrament of baptism – one of the thin places where the ‘extraordinary’ of God’s grace blesses the ‘ordinary’ water we are baptized with. [For more … click on Title]
You can’t legislate for love, we know, but here God through Jesus (in this reading) does command us to love. A royal decree you might say. Discovering the difference between what God can and does achieve and what our laws and the sheer might of the world cannot achieve, is one of the great wonders of being human and of being a person of faith. Discovering …. [more to follow – click Title]
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