Verse of the day
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.
– Revelation 7:9
Voice of the day
No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about.
– Edward Said
Prayer of the day
God of all, you rejoice in our many traditions, languages, and cultures. May we see our differences as things that bring us together in love, rather than keep us apart out of fear.
Those who have entered deeply into their hearts and found the intimate home where they encounter their Lord come to the mysterious discovery that solidarity is the other side of intimacy. They come to the awareness that the intimacy of God’s house excludes no one and includes everyone. They start to see that the home they have found in their innermost being is as wide as the whole of humanity. . . . it is of great importance to see the inner connection between intimacy and solidarity. If we fail to recognize this connection, our spirituality will become either privatized or narrowly activist and will no longer reflect the full beauty of living in God’s house.
Verse of the day
Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.
– Proverbs 16:3
Voice of the day
It is time to build new habits for a new context. What would goodness look like in your life? In your family? In your community? In our nation? Dare to dream it. Then build it.
– Lisa Sharon Harper, “Dreaming My Home Into Being”
Prayer of the day
Give us courage to dream new dreams of goodness. Give us strength to build on these dreams.
“I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”—Rosa Parks
For a very long time I considered low self-esteem to be some kind of virtue. I had been warned so often against pride and conceit that I came to consider it a good thing to deprecate myself. But now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.
The first love says: “You are loved long before other people can love you or you can love others. You are accepted long before you can accept others or receive their acceptance. You are safe long before you can offer or receive safety.” Home is the place where that first love dwells and speaks gently to us. It requires discipline to come home and listen, especially when our fears are so noisy that they keep driving us outside of ourselves. But when we grasp the truth that we already have a home, we may at last have the strength to unmask the illusions created by our fears and continue to return again and again and again.
Verse of the day
So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.
– Galatians 6:9-10
Voice of the day
We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.
– Bryan Stevenson, “Just Mercy” (2014)
Prayer of the day
Give us a compassion that refuses to turn a blind eye to the mistreatment of others. Forgive us for what we have left undone.
“Anger does its work. It prompts us to action, for better or worse. With time and practice, we can let the reflexive reactions of fight/flight/freeze, mirroring, and judging pass by like unwanted items on a conveyor belt. Also, with practice, we can make space for creative actions to be prompted by our anger. . . actions that are in tune with the Spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (see Galatians 5:22). . . actions that overcome evil with good and bring healing instead of hate.”—Brian McLaren
“UCP [Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping] re-humanizes all sides of the conflict. For violence to be possible, the perpetrator must see the people they target as less than human (and thus lose part of their own humanity). Dehumanization is woven throughout all military training. And though armed peacekeeping has an aim of preventing violence, it largely uses the same threat of force that the violent faction of a conflict inflicts, but changes the direction of that threat of force so that the violent group also fears it. UCP adheres to an approach free from inciting fear or threat.”—Mica Stumpf, “The Future of Security”
“Oftentimes, we wait until there’s a riot, or we wait until someone’s been killed, and then we ask, ‘Well, what can nonviolence do about it?’ And there’s a lot that nonviolence needs to do in response to it, but that’s almost like asking someone to wait until you’re in a fight to start learning about martial arts and self-defense. It’s a little late in the game. A lot of the work that we try to do is what we are doing in our communities every single day so that when these heightened moments happen, we’re already grounded.”—Kazu Haga
Pastor Michael Moore's Blog 