There’s something about crisis that wakes us up and helps us start looking around for where in the world God is.

As we’ve reflected this week on how our journeys twist and turn, today we listen in to a poet.

So much of the spiritual journey is just saying yes.

Today is an exercise for the imagination…

How are you at wandering with your feet, or are you so rigidly focused that you’d never dare stray off the path?

Expanding our views is always painful.

Our theme verse for the week is that Jesus came “to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18). In that same message, Jesus talked about poverty and incarceration as signs of where oppression flourished. And then Jesus mentioned health.

In his inaugural sermon in Luke 4, Jesus says that he came ‘to set the oppressed free.’ Yesterday we looked at the first category of the oppressed: those who are economically oppressed. Today, we’re thinking about Jesus’s second category: the incarcerated.

In his inaugural sermon, Jesus lays out his vision for why he came. He quotes from the prophet Isaiah, summarizing it all with the words, “to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:19).

These verses always pack a punch.

Today we hear about patriarchy from four women of color.

Today we’ll hear a bible story that most of us have never encountered before.

Today we look at how patriarchy has impacted the very bible we read.

There’s really only one place where Jesus calls someone ‘daughter’ and there’s really only one place where he calls someone ‘son.’ And they are VERY instructive.

So many times, the patriarchy starts when Eve is cast as the ‘helper’ of Adam. But that’s actually not what the Bible teaches.

After a challenging week of thinking about money and what it means to follow Jesus financially, it’s a good day for a simple prayer/poem.

On Sunday we talked about steering clear of shame when it comes to talking about money and at the same time holding to the radical teaching of scripture.

Americans tend to love the idea of the self-made man (and yes, it’s usually males who love this idea the most). Whether or not we can articulate it, we tend to think of ourselves as deserving of our pay because, after all, we worked for it. Rarely, if ever, do we stop to recognize where our ability to work came from.

In the early church, not unlike the church today, those who were rich had more influence.