Easter is all about hope, but the truth is that many people are not feeling very hopeful right now. The resurrection stories remind us that Jesus doesn’t meet us in our hope, but first in our grief. It is in Mary’s grief and confusion that Jesus calls her name and invites her into hope for something that she cannot yet fully understand.

Where is God reaching out to you in your grief and pain and inviting you into hope?

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Note: For the next two weeks, ther will be no podcast episode because we are having a music service and a guest preacher at my church.

Be sure to check back on May 12th as we kick off our new series - “It’s Complicated - Family as a Means of Grace”

Podcast Intro recorded by Ariana Sefa

Join me this Palm Sunday as we reflect on the contrast of the shouting crowds and Jesus' humble silence as he enters Jerusalem. When are you called to shout and when is it better to be silent?

Podcast Intro recorded by Ariana Sefa

“'God has a really bad habit of using people we don’t approve of,'” Rachel Held Evans once said. “'What makes the gospel offensive is not who it keeps out, but who it lets in.'”

I might tweak Evans’s formulation and put it this way: God has a really bad habit of loving people we don’t approve of. Or maybe this: God has a really bad habit of showing mercy to people we don’t approve of.

Or maybe: God has a really bad habit of extending grace to people we don’t approve of" (Jeff Chu).

Join us this week as we look deeper into one of those people, Zaccheus, the chief tax collector, and what his example might have to teach us about ourselves.

Podcast Intro recorded by Ariana Sefa