The book of Jonah is a strange tale that you probably remember from Sunday School. It’s got a big whale, a rebellious prophet, a tree eating worm, and a repentant Nineveh. These features make Jonah perfect for the screen but a bit hard to understand as scripture. Should we read Jonah like any other prophet or is it a parable? That strange ambiguity takes some work to understand but it’s also what makes the book of Jonah so powerful. At the heart of the story of Jonah is a reluctant prophet frustrated by the mercy of God. As we read this strange little story, we’re invited to look at our own lives and ask ourselves, do we really want God to love our enemies? Do we really want God to be merciful?

The book of Jonah is more than a story about a reluctant prophet and a big fish—it’s a literary masterpiece rich with irony, symbolism, personification, and foreshadowing. In this week’s message, Abby invited us to read Jonah not just for its literal details, but for the deeper truths it conveys about the heart of God.

Through the storm narrative in Jonah 1, we meet a prophet who runs from God, a group of pagan sailors who respond with surprising faith, and a God who responds not with punishment but with compassion. Jonah descends—literally and symbolically—as far from God as one can go, yet God meets him there. Abby reminds us that God’s love is not performance-based. It’s present in the mess. It pursues us in our failure. And yes, it's scandalously extended even to our enemies.

The book of Jonah is a strange tale that you probably remember from Sunday School. It’s got a big whale, a rebellious prophet, a tree eating worm, and a repentant Nineveh. These features make Jonah perfect for the screen but a bit hard to understand as scripture. Should we read Jonah like any other prophet or is it a parable? That strange ambiguity takes some work to understand but it’s also what makes the book of Jonah so powerful. At the heart of the story of Jonah is a reluctant prophet frustrated by the mercy of God. As we read this strange little story, we’re invited to look at our own lives and ask ourselves, do we really want God to love our enemies? Do we really want God to be merciful?

This week we conclude our series Reckless?, exploring the bold, relational, and non-coercive love of God. Today’s focus is the tension between suffering and hope, control and trust, certainty and identity.

Romans 8 reminds us that even in the groaning of creation, the ache of uncertainty, and the absence of easy answers, God is with us. Not through domination or certainty, but through loving presence, secure attachment, and patient hope.

This passage invites us to live as co-laborers with God—not by escaping the tension, but by rooting our identity in God’s love and letting that shape how we wait, pray, and participate in the healing of the world.

This week in our Reckless? series, we explore a powerful and surprising truth: God's love is vulnerable. While vulnerability might seem weak or unsafe, the story of Jesus reveals a God who does not grasp at power or rule from a distance, but who gives, descends, and draws near—even to the point of suffering. Paul’s hymn in Philippians 2 invites us to take on the same posture: to live not from control or coercion, but from the strength of sacrificial love.

To love is to be vulnerable. And to be vulnerable is to share in the very heart of who God is.

On Trinity Sunday—and Father’s Day—we reflect on what it means to say “God is love.” This week, we explored the idea of God’s love being “reckless”—not in a careless way, but in a bold, self-giving, audacious way that risks for the sake of relationship. The Trinity shows us that God is not an isolated being but a community—Father, Son, and Spirit—defined by mutual love and inclusion.

This loving community doesn’t just exist within God’s self but extends outward to us. God invites us to be part of the divine family—not based on biology, merit, or obligation—but through the freedom of love. This is the kind of love we call “chosen family.” And it’s the kind of love God shows us—risky, vulnerable, self-giving—and ultimately, transformational.

Eastertide is the season we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection isn’t just a one time event to commemorate, it is instead a world altering reality that invites us into a whole new way of living. We see this on full display for the earliest followers of Jesus who found their lives and world upturned by their surprising king who defeated death, sin, and the powers of evil not through violence but love. Jesus’ self-sacrificial, other oriented love was vindicated in the resurrection and served as the way of life for early followers.

Eastertide is the season we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection isn’t just a one time event to commemorate, it is instead a world altering reality that invites us into a whole new way of living. We see this on full display for the earliest followers of Jesus who found their lives and world upturned by their surprising king who defeated death, sin, and the powers of evil not through violence but love. Jesus’ self-sacrificial, other oriented love was vindicated in the resurrection and served as the way of life for early followers. 

Eastertide is the season we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection isn’t just a one time event to commemorate, it is instead a world altering reality that invites us into a whole new way of living. We see this on full display for the earliest followers of Jesus who found their lives and world upturned by their surprising king who defeated death, sin, and the powers of evil not through violence but love. Jesus’ self-sacrificial, other oriented love was vindicated in the resurrection and served as the way of life for early followers.

Eastertide is the season we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection isn’t just a one time event to commemorate, it is instead a world altering reality that invites us into a whole new way of living. We see this on full display for the earliest followers of Jesus who found their lives and world upturned by their surprising king who defeated death, sin, and the powers of evil not through violence but love. Jesus’ self-sacrificial, other oriented love was vindicated in the resurrection and served as the way of life for early followers.