Cross Encounters

When we are invited to call someone by their name, we are being drawn into a personal relationship.

Learning to walk is marked by joy and frustration whether we’re talking about it physically or in terms of discipleship. Our footsteps can reveal our identity, mood, and intention. Only when following Jesus do we truly learn about ourselves and, more importantly, about our God who wants us to live and walk with joy.

When we have something in common – DNA, place of birth, or occupation – we make alliances because to be alone is to be vulnerable and fodder. Jesus came along and revealed that we all have something in common – that he loves each one of us and rescued us to live with him. That new perspective has reshaped the world but there is so much more to do.

Gold medals are all about winning but perhaps one should think of them as an acknowledgement of champions. How might you be a champion disciple of Jesus?

Faith is very personal but in Christianity it is not centred in us!

In Christianity, God made the world ’very good’. Human beings ruined the world. God didn’t throw his creation into the bin but chose to enter it and rescue. That’s the message people need to hear about Jesus – and themselves.

The world made in our image is a world of enslavement and death. A world made in God’s image is one of serving others and life. And Jesus came into our world so that our way of things need not be ’the way of this world’.

There are many things, I’m sure, but the most important is what God in Jesus gives to us - life with Him to live and share.

Christianity is all about leading to Baptism or returning to it.

With Jesus, Christians are and are not out of place in this world! We are placed where we can serve.

What is normal? What everyone is doing or what we should be doing? When people realise that Jesus died for them and rose again then normal becomes related to him – and life is never normal again!

The Church is one and yet fractured and so it is important that the disciples of Jesus listen to each so that God’s Word is shared, taught, and lived as Jesus wants.

The experience of faith is not the ground of faith.

For good or ill, we classify ourselves and others and produce good or ill with them. With Jesus the categories are much simpler – all human beings are sinners and all human beings are loved by God.

When we wore masks and how we behave now is really all about not hurting others.

In a world full of blasphemy and false teaching about God, how should Christians respond? With words that point to the God who forgives.

Words are powerful and should be handled with care. They are tied so deeply to living. They reflect the truth that the only, one, true God speaks.

Such is the promise of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father. What comfort, help, and strength that can be to counter violence, shame, fear, and death. Thank you, Holy Spirit!

Some things don’t change and when it comes to our Triune God’s grace and mercy that is good news!

When things are unexpected for us, they are not unexpected for God.

The Beatitudes are not the programme to get blessings but give us an insight of Jesus and why following him is blessed.

Death can make us morose, afraid, and lots more which shrivels life to a husk. Only Jesus has broken its power. Anything else that claims a defeat of death is delusion.

The coronation of King Charles III provides a moment for everyone to consider the civic role in society. For Christians that always means following Jesus seeking to serve.

The sirens get our attention but do we listen? We do when we trust the messenger. When God in Jesus is trusted then we have alerts, advice, support, and help in all situations.

That’s a good motto for life and an even better one for faith!