"Everything is moving towards eternity. All of our actions and hopes and theology and practices and all of our faith is moving us towards the ultimate end that we know as eternal life. And one of the things that 1 John reminds us is that when we engage with this God in the created order by following Jesus . . . we are given eternal life."

-Rev. Barrett Owen

The beginning and end of everything is love. Another way to say this is, “Everything begins and ends out of love.” Love is at the beginning of everything . . . and love is what’s left after everything is gone. Love is before it all and through it all and after it all. Love is eternal.

-Dr. Jim Everette

God is love. For those who abide in love, remain in love, and invest in love, and inject love into their being . . . abide in God. And God abides in them. We invite God in, and God’s abiding love takes on new life in us. We could say, “Every time we love, or feel love, or share love, or every time we engage in loving acts . . . we become that which comes from God. We reflect God. Because we are what we eat. And since God is love, we are love.

-Rev. Barrett Owen

The God of the Universe, in all God’s great mystery and unknowing, that God receives us out of (and comes to us in) love.

-Rev. Barrett Owen

People don’t really believe they’re made from God’s light. When it comes to their own private relationship with God . . . they carry this myth that they’re made from the darkness. That they’re evil. But that’s a lie. You are a reflection of God’s light . . . it’s inside of us . . . and Jesus died on the cross so we could see it and feel it and claim it and shine it!

-Rev. Barrett Owen

We must be followers of the light. God is our light. God is that which we follow and how we see. There’s no darkness in him either. And if we’re going to follow it . . . we must live in a way that makes us able to absorb and reflect that light . . . which means there can’t be darkness in us either. And yet sin is darkness.

-Rev. John Daniels

What makes Holy Week holy is that it bridges death and life. It says that which dies eventually lives. And if things want to truly live, then they’re going to have to die. Holy Week captures the essence of every aspect of the human condition and ends with Jesus overcoming the grave. You could even say by his resurrection he turns graves into gardens.

-Rev. Barrett Owen

What makes Holy Week holy is that it bridges death and life. It says that which dies eventually lives. And if things want to truly live, then they’re going to have to die. Holy Week captures the essence of every aspect of the human condition and ends with Jesus overcoming the grave. You could even say by his resurrection he turns graves into gardens.

-Rev. Barrett Owen

What makes Holy Week holy is that it bridges death and life. It says that which dies eventually lives. And if things want to truly live, then they’re going to have to die. Holy Week captures the essence of every aspect of the human condition and ends with Jesus overcoming the grave. You could even say by his resurrection he turns graves into gardens.

-Rev. Barrett Owen

John 12:28 is a passage we don’t often quote but we should: “Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came for heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Here is the voice of God speaking to Jesus saying that a way has been made for us all to move our shame to glory. But the way is going to include death.

-Rev. Barrett Owen