By Jim Kast-Keat
ideas done daily
The truth is simple: only love will give our lives any meaning at all, any substance, love as service, love as justice, love as grace and forgiveness, love that is living in the world for others. Download the full...
A part of what we remember on Good Friday is that God suffers with us even to the point where God feels the absence of God, when Jesus says, “My father, why have you forsaken me?” Download the full...
On that night long ago, Jesus knew this was the last time he would be surrounded by his closest friends. These were his final hours as a free man. Soon he would be arrested, tried, and hung on a cross....
Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Download the full episode The post I Am Thirsty appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
And if there is a God and God is not finished with us, if there is a God then the human word is not the last word. God is. Download the full episode The post Changed for Good appeared...
You may not hear God speaking but can you feel God moving? Download the full episode The post Finding God in the Silence appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
We need the Jesus of Holy Week to teach us that you can never be perfect enough to avoid rejection. Download the full episode The post The Rejects appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
Anger is the joyful noise that makes the ears of the powerful perk up because it is a sign that the new life is not yet here but maybe it’s just around the corner. Download the full episode The...
It’s easy to deny reality when you don’t look below the surface. Download the full episode The post Ever Before Me appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
You are a child of God and by nature of being a child of God, you are a priest. Download the full episode The post The Order of Melchizedek appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
Broken hearts don’t get fixed. They become the soil for a new heart to grow. Download the full episode The post A Meditation for the Brokenhearted appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
Like a grain of wheat falls into a compost pile, Jesus falls into the earth. The damp and still and timeless earth. The quiet earth, accept for the faint percussion of the blind critters who tiptoe over the beads of...
God is inclining us as new covenant keepers to look for these holy moments all around us. Download the full episode The post Holy Moments appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
The transformation of our spiritual lives during Lent or at any other season of the year is not focused on us. God is at the center of the story. And the healing justice, the lavish generosity, and unfettered welcome is...
Even as we go through this trial and suffering and our nation’s life is laid down, I invite you to look for new signs of life inspired by divine minds that are emerging. Take a moment in your own life...
What kind of discipline or habit could you live into for the rest of Lent and beyond that empowers you to dig deep into your identity as a beloved child of God? Download the full episode The post A...
“Life of the ages” and “life abundant” are two ways of saying the same thing. One isn’t after you die and the other before you die. Both are ways of describing a whole, healthy, overflowing, liberated life in this life....
The night is over and it is time to meet the day. It is time to know the deep rhythms of our soul’s distinct time, to tune into the tempos and patterns of our own communities, to pay attention to...
If I’m going to attribute every stroke of luck, every gratuitous offering of grace, every open parking space divine intervention, then don’t I also have to assume that the same hand is at work, or choosing not to work, in...
Our job, before doing anything, is to pray with and for the people. I wonder what it must have felt like to be Moses. Moses was also running from bondage to freedom. Moses was also susceptible to serpent bites. But...
This is the upside down kingdom. We must come to the end of ourselves. We must be cracked open to our own sin and the pain of the world in order to begin to allow God’s kingdom to enter in,...
So what will we pray today? Will we pray with our hands, our feet, our breathing? Will we pray with our most colorful language or in the silence of this train ride? Download the full episode The post God...
We need a theological whip where drive the arrogance out of our spirits. Download the full episode The post Ministry vs. Money appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
Will we in this century, not yet two decades old, beat swords into plowshares? Banish the bullets and silence the deafening roar of handguns and AK-whatevers? Will the color of our skins and the content of varying cultures continue to divide?...
The one I follow, Jesus, Immanuel, is marked as a radical lover of the lowly, marked as a revolutionary threat to power and ultimately, because of these things, marked like a tree for cutting down with that crude orange plastic...
What would it mean for us to shut out all the words, even for just, say, fifteen minutes a day this Lent? To listen only to the heavens? To immerse ourselves in silence? To tune our ears to the still...
What do we sacrifice today for the idols that we worship? Who do we sacrifice today for the idols that we worship? The post I Think We Have Some Work To Do appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
It is here, in the healing of our souls, that we must begin. For in order to heal the brokenness of our world, we must first tend to the brokenness in our own lives. Download the full episode The...
Perhaps all of our talk about prayer and sacrifice and following Jesus is nothing more theological than a simple call to change. Download the full episode The post For a Change appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
We saw this in Selma with Martin. We saw this in Montgomery with Rosa. We saw it in Pakistan with Malala. We saw it in Soweto with Desmond. We saw it in Tieneman Square with Wang Weilin. We saw it...
The God in whom Abraham trusted is a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things which do not exist. Download the full episode The post Wakanda Forever appeared first on Thirty Seconds or...
Your work for social justice is important and you belong in the greater movement for social change. Download the full episode The post Belonging Together appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
Your work for social justice is important and you belong in the greater movement for social change. Download the full episode The post So Beautiful, So Hard appeared first on Thirty Seconds or Less.
I see you. I know you hurt. I have known your pain. I see you. And in that seeing, just a little bit of light breaks through the darkness. Download the full episode The post I See You appeared first...
The juxtaposition between Lent, a time of renewal for my commitment to God, and a red roadster launched by a business man into eternity — this is disorienting. Download the full episode The post Rockets and Red Convertibles appeared first...
It is not enough to stay quiet and comfortable while the world around you goes to hell. You must leave the confines of heaven and place your feet in the flames, to stand with the oppressed and silence your voice...
God is utterly in control. Jesus taught that all is forgiven for those who love him and grace will be sufficient to heal each wound. My task is to sit with that. Admittedly, I sit with it uncomfortably. The post...
When love hurts us so much we are sure that our shattered hearts will never mend, will we love anyway? When doing what is right and just isn’t what is easy or popular or expedient, will we do right anyway?...
Together we are in a movement to be the beloved community with others. We put our trust in God and God helps us to be bold in making connections with others. Download the full episode The post Struggling with Trust...
Our tendency has been to respond to God’s covenant with greed instead of gratitude, dismissal instead of attention, confident ignorance instead of loving curiosity. The prophets criticize this and don’t we know it today. Download the full episode The post...
Those made poor are invisible, expendable. Women are at constant risk. People of color are in the crosshairs of even those, too many of them, sworn to serve and protect. Prisons are 21st century plantations. Love has boundaries inconsistent with...
Repentance is a realignment, not an apology. Repentance is picking yourself up, stepping back into the movement, and being fully present in spite of yourself. Repentance is looking up from your white guilt or your mansplaining or your privileged navel-gazing...
There is a piece of the divine in me and in all of us. And we are called to unleash this love and justice, this divine spark, in the world around us, to show the world what God looks like,...
Today we show up for the ashes, asking to be marked by the dust, acknowledging that sometimes things break, even us. Our lives crack and fissure and today we remember that we are dust. Download the full episode The post...
Love has a scar in the center of her belly where her umbilical cord was severed. Love was born in mucus and blood, frightened and helpless. Love wears a skin which records her history in wrinkles and scars. Love is...
Waiting for the results, our hearts break at the news. We break because we love one another. We gather because we need one another. We resist because we love the possibilities of We the People. We mourn because we love...
Love. The advent is the bridge of love between unreachable places. The love takes us all into each other’s destinies in love and care. Advent is about a bridge between you and me. There was a fear between you and...
I moved to the States when I was twelve years old. I always lived with my mom, I didn’t have my father around and my role model was my uncle John, American. I met him when I was twelve and...
I said I wasn’t gonna tell nobody but I couldn’t keep it to myself Oh I couldn’t keep it too myself Oh I couldn’t keep it too myself I said I wasn’t gonna tell nobody but I couldn’t keep it...
