Reflection
The emerging paradigm sees the Christian life as a life of relationship and transformation. Being Christian is not about meeting requirements for a future reward in an afterlife. Rather, the Christian life is abou a relationship with God that transforms life in the present.
The Heart of Christianity
Prayer
May I live in the present moment.
Action
How can we be in relationship and work together in a way the world really needs? What does it mean to be a community?
Suggested Readings
I, the Creator, gave my people life. Peace, peace to the far and the near, says the Lord; and I will heal them.
Isaiah 57:19
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience bearing with one another and forgiving one another. . . as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must do. And over all of these put on love, that is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.
Colossians 3: 12-15
The Church is not a relief organization, an enterprise or an NGO, but a community of people, animated by the Holy Spirit, who have lived and are living the wonder of the encounter with Jesus Christ and want to share this experience of deep joy, the message of salvation that the Lord gave us.
Pope Francis
The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we have grown at a given moment. And if this is the correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated upon achieving reform from within.
Gandhi
When we maintain ourselves as a system committed to love, we create a morphogenic field of peace, one in which gentleness and patience flow out of humble recognition of our connectedness to all…The keeping of the memory and mission of Jesus is not about making him the object of our worship but about making ourselves the locus of the reign of God.
Radical Amazement
Life is a constant Advent season: we are continually waiting to become, to discover, to complete, to fulfill. Hope, struggle, fear, expectation and fulfillment are all part of our experience.
Anonymous