Relationships – SSJE

Choose wisely. Choose prayerfully. Choose to put your time and effort into those things that will endure. Drawing on both Gandhi and Jesus, Br. David Vryhof urges us to pray honestly, examine our priorities, and invest our lives in what will truly last.

Jesus is here talking about peace from the inside out. He’s talking about being at peace in the storm. Jesus offers a deeper peace than calm or comfort – a peace that begins within us and steadies us in the middle of life’s storms. But Br. Curtis Almquist also says that real peace in the world must be joined to justice, and that we're called to help bring both.

What matters in life is more than winning for ourselves. What truly matters in this life is helping others win, even if it means slowing down and changing our course. Br. David Vryhof explores the countercultural witness of the early Church, and finds in it a way for us to life, joy, and love.

We are living in a time that needs the transformative hope of the Easter gospel: the message that life has meaning in union with a Savior who came to love, not to condemn the world. In his Easter message, Br. Keith Nelson looks to Christ our healer comes to attend to us, and to the world.

The order of reality we choose – consciously or unconsciously – is the story that molds our most basic experiences. Br. Keith Nelson urges us to claim the order of reality to which we belong, which can make real our resistance.

We are called to belong to each other; indeed, God created us to belong to each other. Although so many of us may feel cut off, isolated, and turned inward, Br. Lain Wilson reflects on Jesus' healing of the deaf man as an invitation for us how and to whom we belong.

From the very start, Jesus consistently bequeathed dignity and showed the warmest welcome to the widest cast of people. Br. Curtis Almquist draws our attention to Jesus' expansive and encompassing love, and invites us likewise to pray both for those we love and for those for whom our hearts are hardened.

"The only way I know to hear Jesus’ parable about the master and the slave is in the broader context of what we do know about Jesus: who he was, what he taught, how he gave of his life in love as a liberator for everyone." Br. Curtis Almquist wrestles with Jesus' challenging parable of the master and slave, and with what the legacy of slavery and racism challenges us to do now.