Open Table United Methodist Church

When we look at scripture, we see that some of the most major acts of resistance against the systems and powers that were oppressing people were enacted by women.

Jesus modeled for us how to be vulnerable, forgiving, and how to remove shame from those around us. When we allow shame to control us, we separate ourselves from others and from God. How can we best live a life of freedom, love, and vulnerability?

Having a sense of belonging is incredibly important, but our society has pushed us further and further apart. How do we regain this for ourselves, and make space for others? How do we prioritize belonging for our communities as the body of Christ?

The way of Jesus is a way of hospitality. How can we be truly and radically hospitable? By being a safe place, listening, empowering, being willing to be inconvenienced, be willing to be surprised, and refusing to allow ourselves to be the victim of someone else's story. True hospitality encourages the flourishing of those around us.

Jesus has come to liberate us and to reveal a humanity where we are all set free, empowered, and out from under systems of dehumanization and oppression. How do we truly examine our own attachment to these systems?

It's so easy to only see the negatives, and to catastrophize our own lives and futures. But when we think with a new narrative, one of grace, and patience, and hope, it reframes our minds and helps us to be able to create abundance and flourishing for our neighbors.

How can we use the time of Lent to embrace being present, to leave things behind that we no longer need, and to come through this time changed? How do we give permission to those around us to grow and embrace change on their own journeys?

God's love and compassion for you is deep and all-encompassing. How do we bind up the oppression and dehumanization that is so pervasive in our worlds? How can we do the work of stopping oppressive forces in order to be people of peace?

It can be easy for us to get caught up in the minutia of "rules", even in the church. How do we break through to true freedom, for both ourselves and those around us? May we be the people who care more about the flourishing of our neighbors, about feeding those who are hungry, than about a system of rules we have been taught keeps us holy.

God loves you just as you are, and you can rest fully in being deeply wanted and protected. Jesus has lifted our shame, all shame, and we can now be the people who have been set free, and who can set others free as well.

Jesus is offering us an invitation- to come and follow him into compassion and love, and to invite those around us into a life of liberation, freedom, grace, and equality. What do we have to leave behind? How do we follow Jesus in this modern, frenzied life?

What stories, what ideologies are you forming your life around? How have you tried to be something you're not without accepting what God's story says about you? Listen this week and be encouraged that we must remember we are the beloved of God, and God is well pleased with us, just as we are.

In this new year will we cultivate and nourish the fruits of compassion or the weeds of discontent?

Gift giving guide 2020! There is a great joy in living in such a way to empower those that come after us - realizing that all of our lives are unfinished symphonies.

As the story of Scripture unfolds there is a constant theme of the forgiveness of debts. Debt, in fact, is often linked with spiritual deficiency but Jesus has come to destroy all forms of debt and peace cannot come unless there is an elimination of debt. We dare you to listen!

When we wake up and tune into what God is doing, we find that there is bounty in the community, presence, and energy of operating in God's kingdom. How do we tune in to the goodness of what God is doing?

As, Christians, we are covenanted to one another.