We are all characters in the story of God's redemption— in the midst of being desperately needy, God redeems us. Psalm 107 teaches us to declare stories of God's redemption in our own story.

Psalm 95:6 teaches us that we can tell Jesus we love him with our bodies. When we bow down, we say that Jesus is our king. When we bend our knew, we pause to thank Jesus for being with us. When we kneel before the Lord, we surrender our lives to Jesus.

Psalm 89 teaches us to speak what we feel and what we ought to say by recalling God's steadfast love of us, crying out to him, wrestling with him, and praising him forever.

How good and pleasant it is when God's people live in unity. And how terrible it is when they live in division.

1. The pain of division

2. The practice of reconciliation

3. The power of unity

When we are reconciled to God in Christ and learn to reconcile with one another in the Church, we become ministers of reconciliation in our world.

Jesus is with us in our darkest times. As Psalm 77 describe the disorienting reality of depression in all of its forms. It also orients us to the reality of who God is. Though we experience the crushing waters of destruction, God promises to bring us through Jesus into the cleansing waters of baptism.

In the Psalms we find our words. We find a voice to bring the true experiences and sufferings we are living to the true and living God. And in the Psalms we find ourselves in God's word. We don't hide ourselves from God; we hide ourselves in him. We don't fit him into our experiences and pain; we fit ourselves in him. We find in the Psalms a pathway of Prayer because in Jesus, he has once again made the prayers of people the prayers of God. As Jesus hangs on the cross, he prays the Psalms and finds in the Psalms words for his own suffering— Why have you forsaken me? (Psalm 22). And in the Psalms he finds himself safe in God—Into your hands I commend my spirit (Psalm 31).

At the heart of our lives and of the universe is this truth—God is love. Love requires a subject and an object, and God in his relationship with Godself is both the lover and the beloved. He invites us into the fullness of his love, to both be loved and to love.

As we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate God pouring out his never ending love for us, pouring out his presence in the Holy Spirit, and pouring out his church for the world. God has poured himself into us so that we can pour ourselves out for others.

Jesus ascends to heaven as king so that we can be with him in heaven and he can be with us on earth until the kingdom of heaven fully comes and heals the kingdom of earth. Because Jesus is king, we have a kingdom family, a kingdom inheritance, and a kingdom mission.

We were made to find a home in God but so often choose to wander away from that home. In John 15, Jesus invites us to make our home in him and remain in his love by being branches connected to the vine, by being obedient to God's Word and his leading, and by bearing fruit.