In a world where it seems increasingly difficult to know what to believe, and where life at times can feel stark raving bonkers, what we’re all yearning for is something real, true and dependable. We don’t need more words or speeches right now, we need universe-altering action. Christmas says God became a human. One of us. He showed us he knows exactly what it is like to be human and he showed us exactly what it is to be God. That’s action. He it is who makes sense of our world, even when the world seems to be losing its marbles. He is what we’re made for and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him. Thank God for Christmas
Connections: Vision of the church.
Connections: To culture.
Connections: To one another.
The mysterious world of faith: faith and idols.
The mysterious world of faith: faith and resources.
The Adulterous Woman: One Forgiveness Step Too Far
The scandal of grace is more outrageous than we can ever know. The Adulterous Woman who is brought before Jesus in John 8, provides us with one of the most evocative and famous interactions in all of the gospels, but it’s also one that provides many questions. What did Jesus write in the sand? Why did the Jewish leaders walk away, and what can we take from what Jesus said to the woman, after he told her she was not to be condemned? There is SO much more to this scandalous interaction than meets the eye…
Head or Head? What did you even mean, Paul?
No male or female in Christ, Jesus? So what about 1 Corinthians then? Most of us agree that because our cultural context is so different we can ignore the specifics of what Paul writes to men and women about head coverings, but bigger questions need to be addressed about the relevance of the bible, and indeed, what God actually thinks about male and female today. Hannah has wrestled with these questions for a lot of years, as a wife, mother, feminist and co-leader of Bread. If we come back to Paul’s motivation we see this passage has its roots in the origins of gods plan for mankind: oneness. It’s not that gender is obliterated in the kingdom of God, but rather the division that broken gender distinctions have caused since the fall. This is the redemptive power of Jesus.