John's Only Question While Peter sucks up all the oxygen in the room with loads of questions, John only gets one direct question to Jesus recorded in the Gospels. In the passage immediately pre...
John's Only Question While Peter sucks up all the oxygen in the room with loads of questions, John only gets one direct question to Jesus recorded in the Gospels. In the passage immediately pre...
Matthew 11:28-30, Colossians 3:12, Matthew 5:14-16, Romans 12:18, Matthew 5:9, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
Lord: In our times of weakness and our hours of need, Yours is the strength that enables us to carry on, Yours the shoulder we rest our heads upon. When our load is heavy and too much to bear, Yours a...
Most of us need this type of push to help us start the [reconciliation] journey. We need someone or something to push us out of our comfort zones and the isolated social enclaves that keep us alienate...
Reconciliation is an ongoing spiritual process involving forgiveness, repentance and justice that restores broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flou...
Among those who seek to follow Christ, it is generally understood that in order for reconciliation to occur, there must be repentance, justice and forgiveness. A wrong must be acknowledged and the cau...
Therefore, I’m proposing a new paradigm …that involves the following three core principles: 1. Reconciliation happens by repairing broken systems. 2. Reconciliation happens by engaging power. 3. Recon...
Reconciliation is about how to relate even after forgiveness and justice have occurred. It’s about how to delve even deeper into relationship with one another. An absence of hostility is possible with...
Contact Theory proposes that if diverse groups spend extended time together, their intergroup conflict and the negative effects of racism and ethnocentrism will gradually decrease and possibly even di...
Reconciliation. Let’s be honest. Reconciliation has become a trendy topic of conversation . . . which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People are talking about it and that’s good. There are gatherings, ...
What exactly is racial reconciliation? If you asked ten different people, it’s likely you’d get ten different answers! At a gathering I attended of national multiethnic leaders—pastors, professors, di...
Isaiah 2:4, Matthew 5:9, Romans 12:18, Ephesians 2:14
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks tells a true story in one of his books about peacemaking in what is arguably one of the world's most difficult places to achieve it: the Middle East. One evening in the early ...
Loving God, you are always ready to forgive our sins. We are much less eager to forgive those with whom we disagree. So often when we have something against our friends, family, or strangers, we escal...
Pastor: “Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the la...
Lord, you whose Son did pray that all your children might be one, we come with repentance for the sin of useless division and for the secret vice of pride. We beg forgiveness for harsh judgment, for p...
Ernest Hemingway grasped some of the difficulty that characterizes relationships between fathers and sons in his short story, The Capital of the World . The story revolves around a father and his t...
Matthew 6:14-15, Ephesians 4:31-32, Colossians 3:12-13, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, Psalm 139:23-24, Matthew 18:21-35
Holy Spirit, you have come to reconcile us to each other, but we resist your work to bind us together. We hold onto grudges. Even though we know God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ, we are slow to for...
Break our hearts, Jesus That we may weep as You weep Love as You love Break our hearts Jesus and raise our voices that we may speak and act so all may be safe so all may have opportunity so all may k...
Lord Almighty, you tell us that if we have a quarrel with another, we are to make amends before coming to worship. We seek your mercy today – for all of us live at odds with others to varying degrees....
Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Historical Clue The superscript of Psalm 51 gives us a historical clue about the composition of this Psalm, “A Psalm of David. When Nathan the prophe...
May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...
Romans 5:10, 1 John 1:9, James 5:16, Matthew 6:14-15, Romans 12:18, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19
Gracious God, we know that You have forgiven us in Jesus Christ, but we often remain slow to forgive one other. You have sent Your Spirit to reconcile us to each other, but we resist Your work to bind...
Heavenly Father, we come to you as a sinful people. We are all too aware that our thoughts are not like your thoughts, nor are our ways like your ways. You are righteous and holy, We are fallen and i...
O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of peace, give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudi...
Introduction A Common Lent Reading and A Model for Confession The season of Lent often begins with a call to repentance, and it is a season of reflection and contrition. Ash Wednesday's reading...
O God, whom we cannot love unless we love our neighbors, remove hate and prejudice from us and from all people, so that your children may be reconciled with those we fear, resent, or threaten; an...
Micah 6:8, Isaiah 58:6-12, Matthew 25:31-46, Romans 12:1-2, Psalm 34:14-18
Pastor: Let us turn in prayer to our God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. We pray for the Church, marked with the sign of the cross, as we begin the jour...
We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.
Colossians 1:13-14, Psalm 103:12, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 5:8, Titus 3:5, 1 John 1:9
Holy Father, You are perfect and just, but we are sinful and unworthy. We intend the best in how we live our lives, Yet sin remains in us. Through Your Son, we are able to have redemption and a reconn...