Elijah – The Contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18), pt.2
To follow Jesus and to maintain our identity in Christ and not the Baals of this world, requires the endless intentionality that Elijah puts before us.
To follow Jesus and to maintain our identity in Christ and not the Baals of this world, requires the endless intentionality that Elijah puts before us.
In the story of the widow, we should see Advent. We have a humble and intimate story. God working through small things – birds and the small gifts of a poor widow. The characters are mundane, and the location is marginal. Small people doing small things in unlikely places. And through them, God invades enemy-occupied territory to bring dead things back to life.
By prioritizing Connections we are fighting back against the storm of individualism and polarization that is overtaking our society. Every good thing that we seek to do in the world, should start with these Connections
As we open our eyes and engage in sacred curiosity, we should not limit ourselves to those who look like us, vote like us, or even believe like us.
Being part of the same team means moving from isolation to awareness, polarization to curiosity, and fragmentation to integration.
Church divisions, particularly those that mirror the divisions in society, make the gospel a lie. If we vilify our fellow Christians and create a community based on a mutual dislike of the other, then what do we have to offer the world as an alternative way of being.
The question is whether the church is about a performance or about a community.
We must listen before we become active. He names this active listening before being programmatically active as “sacred curiosity.” Too often, he writes, we are helpful without being curious. We seek to provide answers without first actually figuring out the questions.
he reason these teachers must be avoided, however, is because they will prevent us from growing in the knowledge and grace of Jesus Christ. This is our goal, and anything that interferes with this goal must be avoided.
in these verses we have the most violent and colourfully expressed tirade in the New Testament.