No One to Help?
In this week’s bible studies, we’ve been looking at the story of Jesus healing the ‘invalid’ in John 5. (The phrase ‘invalid’ has always haunted me - that someone could be labelled as “in-valid”. But how often does our world “invalidate” someone, write them off, marginalize them because of a disability, a personality flaw, a public fall from grace, or just because of how they were born? More often than we’d like to imagine.)Anyway, Jesus asks him, “do you want to
Disappointment.
A few weeks ago, in our Jesus SAID (stories) series, I spoke about the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) - that in the face of her enormous disappointment and discouragement, Jesus encouraged us to "pray always and not to lose heart". It's an important message, as we all will and do face disappointment in life. Last week, former Central member Shawn Blythe (who moved to Delaware) sent me a short blog on disappointment that I thought is really worth sharing with
Hearts and Lives on Fire
In today’s reading in our Burning Hearts bible reading plan, we meet a John the Baptist who is, well, fiery. He’s paving the way for Jesus the Messiah to come, saying that when he comes, things will be transformed. That’s what fire does: transforms. It warms, it illuminates, and it destroys as it paves the way for what is new. John is fiery, but be even more on the look out for Jesus because, as he says, Jesus will baptize people in fire
The Shepherd of Easter
A post by Rebecca DeLucia, Next Generation Pastor Since January Central Kids has been memorizing Psalm 23 and on Sunday we got to see the fruit of that labor. What struck me this week as I watched the video over again (it is just so sweet!) was the deep connection Psalm 23 has to Easter. Psalm 23 is often used for quiet, heavy moments; hospital rooms, funerals, seasons of grief. But it was never meant to live only there because it speaks just