The grateful soul of the wise person is the true altar of God. - Philo of Alexandria (first century A.D.)

 Give thanks in all circumstances;for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. - 1 Thessalonians 5:18

One of the overarching themes of scripture is that God blesses us in part so that we can turn around and be a blessing to others. Way back at the beginning of the story, that is what God said to Abraham.

In Sunday’s message we talked some about the penal substitutionary atonement theory, which is one view of what happened on the cross (and it is particularly popular with evangelicals). There are other ways of seeing the scripture.

The apostle Paul got real upset with Christians who thought that checking off boxes on the religion scorecard got them something with God.

The whole purpose of God drawing us to Christ is so that for all eternity God could lavish more and more goodness on us.

As 1 John 4:16 says , God is love. Amongst other things, that means that God is the ultimate bless-er. God loves to bless - to pour on us grace stacked on grace.

Over and over again the Apostle Paul tries to help us understand the implications of Christ coming. Paul’s biggest metaphor for this endeavor is that we are now family with God.

As we’ve reflected all week on what it means to be broken - by the world, by our own decisions - now we are getting set up for this coming week when we talk about healing.

When Jesus talks about the world unraveling into a deep brokenness, this is how he describes it: our love grows cold.

How hard is it for you to own your own mess? How much do you struggle with comparison?

The scripture is also clear that sin is personal. It’s individual actions that we take that hurt ourselves and others and which dishonor God and mistreat our world.

There are plenty of ways to define sin from the bible. One of them is say that sin is social.

Today is a good time to reconnect to that deep longing we each have for a deeper wholeness that runs deeper than the brokenness we’ve come to accept as normal.

The wedding of the Lamb is the big image that runs through the final book in the Bible. Jesus is marrying his bride, which is us.

The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. - Galatians 5:6. Really?

So we each get to go on a journey, instead of the the depths of the sea or to some far off jungle, we get to explore a part of creation that is even more marvelous than those places. We get to explore our very heart and mind and body and soul.

What’s it like for you to look in the mirror like David? Do you come away praising God… or judging yourself for how you look or because the the sense of not matching up to some (unrealistic) ideal?

All week we’ve pondered Mary. Once again we get a window into why she had such great access to Jesus… and are invited into that same sort of relationship.

Mary Magdalene has been called ‘the apostle to the apostles’ because she was the one who told them about the resurrection. Let’s take a moment to ponder this.