The language that we use to describe God and faith and Jesus seems especially worn out sometimes. Sometimes I wish that we could just start over with a new vocabulary. But then there are times when we are given new eyes to see these words in a different light. When we experience these words in the depths of our hearts. And the words become new. And we become new. That is the power at the heart of these most potent words. "Believe" is one such word for me.
Am I selfish for staying home from church on Sunday mornings? This question hit me with force the other night. I love my Sunday mornings. I love them a lot. My reasons for leaving church behind on Sunday mornings differ from the reasons that I still am home while my husband takes our three kids … Continue reading Oxygen Mask
Sometimes it is easy to confuse faith with a set of beliefs. Sometimes people put their faith in their beliefs. Sometimes those beliefs are intertwined with faith to an extent that it is hard to separate the two. I don’t think faith as a set of beliefs is the faith Jesus was talking about in Luke's stories.
Somehow, for me, the Questions were a door that ushered me into an experience of God that was real and beautiful and unexplainable--like nothing I had experienced before the Questions. The Questions were like keys springing open locks that had kept my mind from seeing what was real. Once opened, there was no turning back. There is no way to unsee. The Questions forced me to let go of Beliefs to which I had been clinging to like a life preserver. A set of Beliefs are not what save us or give us life. That Life is from God. Not from what I understand about God.
I am being invited to live the story that I am in, where I am at, right now. Isn't that what life is? An invitation. An invitation to live with eyes, heart, arms, and hands wide open.
Have you ever had a life-changing conversation? One where somebody mentions something that hits you in your heart and you are never the same? Just over a year ago, a dear friend mentioned getting away to a cabin for two days of silence and solitude. Something in me opened up at that phrase: silence and … Continue reading Letting Go of Words
Jessica Sanborn 