Does prayer make you more compassionate, thoughtful, understanding of other people? Does it help you to remember God’s love in the past and to experience it in the present? It does that for me. When I truly open myself, prayer reminds me of how often God has come to find me when I’ve wandered off. It reminds me of God’s grace and mercy, unasked for but abundantly given, and it makes me extend grace to others a little more freely too.

God doesn’t just choose to be with us from afar, but intimately with each of us at every moment, with every breath, with every blink of the eye. With every joy and sadness, God is there.

For God, no one is insignificant and everyone is worth finding. No one is beyond reach; no one is irredeemable. The so-called sinners that Jesus hangs out with, well, they’re not so bad either. Maybe they’re just a little lost.

Brokenness is real, but it is redeemable. As community, we can bring our woundedness together, owning our incompleteness, and drawing near each other. God is present when we come together in our brokenness, God who has chosen to be vulnerable too.

We stay open to what comes, enjoying the heights, living into the depths, and being present to where God is moment by moment, even when the ground is just . . . level.

The call I hear is to try and recognize what leads me: is it the Spirit of God or something else? If it’s the Spirit, then I am on the way toward God and toward good. If what is leading me is not of God, then I can always change directions.

We each have the ability to produce good fruit, to act out of the goodness – the God-ness – inside of us. But we also have it in us to act out of what’s not of God. My decision to do good, to move in the direction of the Spirit, (or not) reflects on who I am as a person.

We are lavishly loved and blessed. What we put out into the world may have a cause and effect dynamic, or it may not. However, the more good we do, the more we become people who do good, and the more we become magnanimous, like God is.

God calls us to keep moving toward trust in God and relationship with God. Sometimes we do that when we notice our blessings, and sometimes we even grow stronger roots during the hard times. Maybe growth in hard times is a blessing too.

Our mission as Christians is not about success and numbers. It’s about following Christ. That’s not usually easy. On the other hand, discipleship promises unexpected abundance, a life of community and communion with God, and witnessing God’s slow but sure reconciling of all things.

Jeremiah and Jesus are pretty clear about God's will for them, but it can be harder for us to figure that out. How do we discern God's call for us, and what do we do when other people in our lives feel the need to weigh in?

God has cared for us by designing our bodies in such a way that our most vulnerable body parts are protected; could we care for the Body of Christ in the same way?

This Sunday's reading from First Corinthians tells us that "there are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit," and that sounds very nice. However, how does this actually manifest in communities and families? Do we really affirm the gifts in each each other? Do we appreciate our own gifts? Let's reflect on all this a little more deeply . . .