Mosaic Lincoln

Singleness is not a sign of human inadequacy, and marriage is one God-given way to alleviate aloneness and display a relationship as covenantal. Understanding marriage is essential to helping our miniature sanctuaries be a place of God's peace and blessing. When scripture speaks of a helper suitable, it does not mean assistant, subordinate or servant. It describes someone who provides essential aid or strength and carries a strong sense of mutuality. Marriage is not only having someone beside you. It is having someone who fill faithfully stand before you as you faithfully stand before them. And this dance displays the relationship of Christ and his Church. Scripture: Genesis 2:18

How do we read scripture contextually with words that speak about headship and submission? Do we idolize the Apostle Paul's words? Do we find ourselves turned off by these words? Having a contextual understanding is essential in understanding these passages while moving toward a beautiful, life-giving way of relating to one another in mutually submissive relationships and growing in our practice of assertive communication with one another. Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-28

We continue diving into a theology of home. Scripture emphasizes the happenings in homes far more than happenings in programmatic religious gatherings. In particular, there is a fascinating gospel narrative in which salvation shows up at a home. It's through Jesus' presence at this home a household experiences salvation and its relation to the world around is transformed. Let's awaken ourselves to salvation present at our tables bringing about rescue and transformation within us and around us. Scripture: Luke 19:1-10

What would it mean to believe God is encountered not only in worship gatherings but in the way someone speaks to his/her spouse, parents bless their children, children honor their parents, people eat together, forgive one another, offer hospitality and welcome strangers? Home isn't where real ministry stops or scales back. It's where it begins! After all, the home – not the local church building – is the place where God's presence, God's blessing, and God's welcome become most visible to us and others. Scripture: Ezekiel 11:16, Genesis 18

Exile can be both literal and metaphorical – a physical displacement from home and a deeper experience of living in a place, season, or circumstance where we feel unsettled, disconnected, or longing for something more permanent. JRR Tolkien wrote to his son, "Our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with a sense of exile." Yet Jesus knows exile full well as he left his heavenly home to make a home with us in our wilderness experience as we wait for the permanent home prepared for us and coming to us in the age to come. The faithful one is faithfully with us as we orient ourselves to his presence even in our experiences of exile. Scripture: Hebrews 11:13-16

"On the night he was betrayed..."
Sometimes in life, love doesn't seem to 'work.' Jesus is no stranger to this reality. God risks humanity's refusal in every moment. And yet he continually moves towards us and loves us. What might this ask of us? There is no safe investment in choosing to love, but there is union with Christ and a power at work transforming everything. Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11:23, 1 John 4:17-19

There is a scarcity mindset in our world telling us we don't have enough, we haven't done enough, and we don't measure up enough. Of, we need to hoard and monopolize whatever resources we can so they don't end up in the hands of someone else. This is not the way for followers of Jesus. God's abundance generally doesn't arrive in our preferred ways, but there is a fullness available to God's people even in the scarcest of times. Scripture: Exodus 16:16, 19-20, John 6:54

As the fragility of the nuclear and biological family becomes exposed from the pressures of life, we are invited to expand our view of our brothers and sisters. God, in Christ, is growing a new human family with many arms available to one another to catch us when we fall and provide support in our journeys. Just as Jesus has moved toward each of us, we move toward one another in love. Scripture: Matthew 12:45-50, Mark 10:29-30, John 1:12-13

The table Jesus prepares for us is an ongoing invitation to allow the heaviness of our hearts to experience a taste of joy and relief. Although our hearts can often draw back from living within the hope of the story of God's promise of rescue and never-ending joy, the mysterious presence of Jesus at the table bids us welcome. The end is the ongoing feast of which we are invited to taste and experience even now in moments together at Jesus' table. Scripture: Psalm 16

Being present with the brokeness (material and immaterial) in our own bodies and the bodies of others is a difficult thing. But we have a God who entered our broken humanity to be in solidarity with us. Will we honor his presence with us in this brokenness and allow him to be at home with us in those broken places? Even there, he is holding us until the coming age of full renewal. Scripture: Psalm 139:7-10