Brokenness Made Beautiful

Galatians 2:11-21

"The gift enacted in the death of Christ has fundamentally reshaped every system of values, and to reestablish the Torah as the ultimate norm would be to refuse God's gift… The good news stands or falls with the realization, in thought and practice, of the incongruous [FREE] Gift." -John Barclay

Galatians 1:11-24

We have more language for inner health than any generation before us. We know our enneagram numbers, we take sabbaticals, we talk about self-knowledge and emotional intelligence, and still so much of it is laid on top of something we haven't touched yet.—Chuck DeGroat

Galatians 1:1-10-- "Bracketing his letter in this way, Paul situates its contents within a movement of grace from God (and Christ) to the Galatians: all its arguments and appeals are intended not just to inform its recipients about this grace, but to place them within its transformative dynamic." (John Barclay, The Gift)

Revelation

'The shock of this reversal,' writes Richard Hays, 'discloses the central mystery of the Apocalypse: God overcomes the world not through a show of force but through the suffering and death of Jesus, the faithful witness.' …It is the central and centering image, the governing metaphor, the focal point of Revelation: a slaughtered Lamb, a crucified Lord." — Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly

Revelation 4

…one of the functions of Revelation was to purge and to refurbish the Christian imagination. It tackles people's imaginative response to the world, which is at least as deep and influential as their intellectual convictions. It recognizes the way a dominant culture, with its images and ideals, constructs the world for us, so that we perceive and respond to the world in its terms… In its place, Revelation offers a different way of perceiving the world which leads people to resist and to challenge the effects of the dominant ideology. –Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation

Revelation 3:14-22 The remarkably perseverant grace of Jesus.

Revelation 3:7-13

I want to believe That if I go outside I'll see a tractor beam Coming to take me to where I'm from I want to go home

--Phoebe Bridgers

Revelation 3:1-6

Revelation 2:18-29, Some who suffer sleepless nights because of pain often say that they, too, rejoice greatly at the morning star. It promises that soon the day will appear and the night of anguish will be over.—Marva Dawn, Joy in Our Weakness: A Gift of Hope from the Book of Revelation

Revelation 2:12-17