Frederick Buechner said: "Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing." Losses shape us and humble us, and may break us, but they don't define us. We are more than the sum of our successes and failures to be who we want to be! Each day we plant ourselves in the flow of divine Love —which is what really defines us—and be part of that giving and receiving. What did that mean for Peter?

What it would be like to wonder what might be waiting — beyond the sorrows we witness, beyond the sadnesses you carry in your heart? Even if you don’t want to run to the tomb yet, maybe you can make some space for wonder, a tiny green sprig growing amidst the stones and sorrow of your heart.

This Lent we've been on a long journey with Peter — observing his journey of faith, and our own — we've been wandering, we've been wondering, but not today! Today, we are walking with purpose. Today, we are waving branches in the air, we are singing and we are celebrating the way God was on the move through Jesus, and the way God is on the move in our midst, now.

When the crowds saw Jesus coming towards Jerusalem, the people were exuberant, cheering him on joyfully as he approached the city.  Enthusiasm is a powerful force which  ignites our spirits and infuses our actions. How is Jesus on the move among us? Could our exuberance be a sign of his presence? 

Peter seems to be someone who lives under the groaning weight of high standards. Being right, doing what is right, and naming what is right seems to matter a great deal to him. In this passage, he approaches Jesus, asking for how to do forgiveness right. Curious about how the conversation unfolding with Jesus? Come have a listen.

Like Peter, we feel angry and scared when what we expect doesn’t come to pass. When certainty gives way to disappointment, we feel disoriented. Jesus invites us to loosen our grip and open ourselves to his love, which is with us in the mystery, complexity, and pain. Jesus’s love, assuring us that after our long sorrow, there will be liberation.

Jesus says to the disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter responds, “You are the Messiah.”

These words aren’t an intellectual assertion, but a clear articulation of Peter’s deeply personal, deeply experiential knowing of Christ: This is what I know to be true about you, because I have experienced you to be this—you are the Messiah.”

This post launches Southpoint's Lenten series "Not All Who Wander Are Lost", incorporating material from A Sanctified Art.

The theme, at its heart, is that at the deepest level of our life, our journeys—no matter how they twist or turn—are held safely within the labyrinth of God’s love. Be open, keep walking, surrender your feet to the next step, trusting the path will lead you home. You are held by the labyrinth as you wander! In today's episode we join Peter as he encounters Jesus and begins to wander.

Jesus has a vision for his Father's house. He has a renovation in mind. He wants to take down walls that keep people out. He wants to replace the architecture of legalism and make room for an abundant feast of grace. He is going to need other people to help him bring about this vision. (Even Jesus isn't expected to do it alone.) Who does he choose for his team?

Jesus holds a vision of who we are that is bigger, richer, deeper and kinder than the limiting beliefs we have of ourselves. When we are ready, Jesus calls us to step out and come wandering with him, so we too can participate in the feast of grace.

The partnership between Elijah and Elisha reminds us of the power and the importance of companionship, and of the way God longs for us to companion each other. We can do hard things, together. Our theme for Epiphany is that God Calls Us, and we’ll wrap up here with "God Doesn’t Call Us to Go it Alone".

Diving into words of hope and comfort — God’s promise of restoration from Isaiah 40:21-31, written for those exiled to Babylon—Anne unpacks the prophet’s call to hope in God. 

This God, who spread the heavens like a big tent, providing a home for all, is vast, creative, and caring; a God of incomparably great agency who comes intimately close and with profound commitment to those who are weary.

This is God, who remembers the weak, who is ‘with and for’ them, particularly those who are in exile. God who will give strength and resiliency to those who need to make the journey from oppression to a place of greater spaciousness and wholeness, a place where they can rebuild their lives. 

Which exiles, tiny in the presence of Babylon, come to your mind? Our LGBTQ+ siblings and their allies? People of colour whose stories and experiences are so often erased in white spaces? Folk struggling with mental or physical illness? Those experiencing the dissolution of a marriage, or close relational ties? Those suffering in zones of conflict or fleeing as refugees?“

Do you not know? Have you not heard?”

We have felt the radical embrace of the expansive love of Jesus, a Jesus who is spacious and inclusive, a Jesus who companions all of us on our long journeys towards restoration. 

This season of Epiphany we look for and celebrate the ways God’s light is being manifest in our midst. When will the manifestation of God come to us this year? Where will this lead us? What will we be called to hear—or to bear? What will we be invited into?

Some themes in the Bible are so threaded through everything that we almost miss them. One of these fundamental, basic themes of the Old and New Testament is that God is a self-revealing God. God communicates. The Bible assumes that God is a god of self-revelation, a god of self-disclosure, the God of revelation. The God of revelation: that's what Epiphany is!

If you look at all the ways God communicates, you notice that God is quite creative about it. God speaks through dreams and visions, angels and animals, creation and prayer, Jesus, written words, the Holy Spirit, and scriptures and people. 

Today, we lean into this idea of God as one who communicates: "I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in their mouth.” (Deut 18, from today’s lectionary reading). Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that God, who is with us, and for us, might put words in each other’s mouth to encourage us? 

If God is one who communicates, then it might behoove us to lean into listening! Today, we are practising listening. What do you hear?