While we find ourselves traveling this way of faith, no matter where we are, God is there with us and invites and empowers us to welcome people to travel with us.

God doesn’t live in an easily-parsed B-movie world, type casting each of us into either hero or villain roles. God lives in the very entanglements, lives with us, and loves us, weedy as we might be, with the same abundance as the sower who throws seed every which way, placing hope even in the more incredulous of places.

We don’t choose the Kingdom of Heaven because it’s easier or softer. We choose it because every other kingdom buckles under the weight of broken promises and false hopes. These other kingdoms promise to satisfy our deepest desires, but in the end, they leave us empty and unfulfilled.

“… As members of Christ’s Body, we can ‘strive for justice and peace among all people,’ first to inaugurate Beloved Community, and not any partisan outcome. Even when our actions appear identical, their roots in our faith matter …”

There is a reluctance in our transactional culture to accept hospitality and grace we believe we have neither earned nor have the capacity to reciprocate. Imagine showing up to social event after social event in people’s homes and eating their food without once bringing a host or hostess gift with you. If you felt a twinge of anxiety at all in imagining that scenario, a) you are not alone, and b) we can too easily intertwine thanksgiving for hospitality with a refusal to be vulnerable enough to be ministered to—believing that a bestowal of grace is a sneaky way of God getting the upper hand somehow on us.

The message is loud and clear: there is no summer vacation when it comes to grafting new members into the Body of Christ.

It is the lifelong unlearning of existential scorekeeping—modeled after our God who delights not in ticking off the boxes of how we each have erred—and good friends, each of us has erred magnificently at some point despite our best attempts—but in recalling us to God’s nature from the beginning steeped in yada—the intimacy of knowing and loving our God; our God who knows us, and loves us anyways.

God takes up another approach to restore creation’s blessing and chooses one people to reveal what was and remains intended for all people. See, God calls Israel into being to bring the message of salvation to the rest of the world. God blesses Israel in order that Israel would become a blessing, and by Israel’s blessing, the whole world would be blessed and restored to its original goodness …