As we’ve been thinking about arguing with God this week, the intro to a long poem came to mind. It’s from a friend of City Church who has had plenty of these challenging conversations with God.

Arguing with God is a common theme in the scriptures. Often, it’s the most mature spiritual leaders who do the most arguing. We’ve been looking at Moses this week, but other examples abound. Today, let’s look at Habakkuk, the great prophet.

At the edge of the Promised Land, Moses and God get into a tussle. There have been all sorts of ups and downs in their relationship, not to mention all the drama between the people in general and God. It hasn’t been easy.

There’s lots of arguing between God and the people in Chapter 33 of Exodus. It starts when God, frustrated by the people’s fickleness and unwillingness to stay connected relationally, has what might be called an emotional outburst. Essentially God says, “I’m done with you!”

The temptations to side with the have’s versus the have nots and perhaps enjoy some scraps from their table are real. How does love of God and others move us?

Since we’ve been considering kairos all week, this seemed like an appropriate way to head into our weekend.

One of the best things about Jesus is that he shows us how to do the spiritual journey in healthy, life-giving ways. In our passage for today, note how Jesus himself kept watch for what God was up to.

There may be two sides of the coin of paying attention that are worth thinking about here. The first is that it’s how we become aware of God working in our lives. The second is that it becomes a form of worship.

What the author of Ephesians is trying to do here is to encourage us to pay attention to our lives. Our lives are not made up just of 24 hour days. Our lives are made up of meaningful moments which last far longer than any stop watch could ever capture.

That’s the passage that Brenna Rubio read to start the service at the beach yesterday. Then she had us do a simple exercise in embodiment. She invited us to take a few deep breaths, breathing in to the word ‘peace’ and breathing out to the word ‘blessing.’

Sharon Irving’s spoken word is a powerful prayer of peace and an experience of intimacy with God.

In the story of the woman caught in adultery the men caught in hypocrisy, Jesus handles the Old Testament prescription of violence with a radical new twist.

Today we want to think more on these sorts of questions. If this awkward book that makes us question and think actually contains the Word of God, can we trust that God will help us find truth as we listen to it?

On Sunday we had some lively interaction around this passage where God commands Moses to kill off a bunch of people. What a doozy.

When Moses went up on Mount Sinai to meet with God, the people of Israel got tempted back into idolatry. Perhaps there’s a way we can look at the story of the Golden Calf with a gentler appreciation for their stumbling.

As we head into the weekend, after a week of reflecting on the role of law and the primacy of love, it seemed appropriate to listen in to some old saints on these things.

Paul writes to his friends in what is modern day Turkey (called Galatia in the first century) about the freedom that we have in Christ.

Sometimes Jesus says things that are so extreme that it’s hard to know what to do with them. So today we’re going to reflect on how this could actually be good news.

One day, an impatient Gentile asked Hillel to explain the entire Torah while standing on one foot.  Hillel’s response was brilliant.

Yesterday we spent time thinking about the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20. And we looked ahead to these somewhat awkward lines in the book of Hebrews that comment specifically about following the law.