Some of you flinched a little when you saw the word.
Justice.
Maybe you braced for a lecture. Maybe you thought, is this about to get political? Maybe you came here for gentleness — breath prayers, Saturday blessings, a God who finally seems to like you — and you’re not sure you signed up for anything heavier than that.
Stay with me. This is not a detour from grace. It’s where grace was always leading.
Because here’s what happens. We want a God who’s gentle with us — but when that same God has strong things to say about the poor, the sick, and the outsider, we kind of gloss over it. We keep those things in separate rooms. God loves me. God loves the poor too… but that’s somewhere else, over there, away from us.
They were never meant to be in separate rooms. The same grace that looked at my exhausted, doubting, rule-weary self and said you are loved exactly as you are does not suddenly get stingy when it turns toward the hungry and the shamed and the ones the system decided were too much, or not enough. A God who likes you likes them. The whole point of the good news is that there was never a “them” at all.
Us-versus-them was never the gospel. It’s the thing the gospel came to undo.
So for the next six weeks, we’re going to follow Jesus through the mission he announced for himself — good news to the poor, freedom for the oppressed, sight for the blind, rest for the weary. We’ll do the honest work of clearing out the teachings that got twisted along the way, and every single week we’ll rebuild something gentler and truer in their place.
Here’s the rhythm, so you know what’s coming:
Tuesdays — the deeper teaching, where we do the honest digging together.
Fridays — the Friday Greenhouse (our paid space), where we bring it down out of our heads and into the body.
Saturdays — a blessing. The exhale.
Sundays — a short video gathering over on Streams of Grace, to rest and rebuild. You can sign up to get the free videos delivered to your email, here.
And here is my promise to you, and I mean it: we are going to tend your nervous system the whole way through. This won’t just stir you up and leave you there. Every hard Tuesday has a soft Saturday. Every deconstruction has a reconstruction. There will be breath, and blessing, and rest. I am not here to hand you more to carry. I’m here to help you set some things down.
Because you were never meant to be sacrificed on the altar of anyone’s system. You are an image-bearer of the Divine, worthy of safety, of peace, and of a faith with room for the whole aching world in it.
You do not have to wander this desert alone. We begin tomorrow.
Before we start: when you hear the word “justice,” what comes up for you? Bracing? Relief? Something you can’t quite name? Tell me in the comments — I’ll be reading every one.
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Much needed in these weary days. Thank you!
When I hear "justice," I think first of the tit-for-tat justice under the Law (eye for eye and tooth for tooth). It was meant as a restraint on human vengeance. There are plenty of examples of human overreaction to grief or offenses against honor in the Old Testament. The Law was meant to cap revenge at no more than the injury received. I think this is still the minimum that people want when they have been injured or have suffered loss.