Today’s prayer guide leads us in a prayer often called “the breath prayer”.
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Today's prayer guide leads us in a quieting exercise.
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Today’s prayer guide includes the song “Dust We Are & Shall Return” by the Brilliance, led by Keziah & Vincent Brackett from a 2016 Brown Line Vineyard Sunday service at Welles Park.
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Insisting that millennia-old stories can speak plainly to a modern day context is one of the major reasons many people find the Bible an obstacle. Take the story of Abraham & Isaac, for example: to modern readers, this is a troubling story about a God who almost had a child sacrificed. Its’ really hard to get beyond that. BUT, to its original audience, this story communicated something very different. Could that communicate something different to us modern readers too?
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In individualistic and capitalistic America, it is particularly hard to live out a conviction to be the keepers of our brothers and sisters. Why? Partly because we see so much of life as transactional. But, maybe above all, because we hate to feel discomfort, and the level of injustice and suffering that many of our brothers and sisters in America experience should make us feel uncomfortable. Kyle coaches us on leaning into that discomfort, letting it humble us, and letting it activate us.
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From the ancient Jewish story of Cain & Abel, we get the powerful suggestion that part of being human is to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers — we are responsible for and to each other. But that is like the definition of “easier said than done”. Vince explores how the story of Cain & Abel addresses this: (1) posing the question “how will we respond to life’s disappointments and resentments?” and (2) showing us an encouraging, loving God who believes in us.
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Drawing from his own spiritual practice and from years mentoring others in their spiritual practice, our resident Spiritual Director Nader suggests various ways to build more quiet into our lives, and the benefits we might experience from that.
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Jumping off of questions and responses we received about Kyle’s recent talk “Faith is not about Heaven vs. Hell”, Vince asks Kyle to tell us more about his journey of faith, how that determines how faith is (and is not) pursued at Brown Line Vineyard, and the potential gifts to the wider Northside Chicago community Brown Line Vineyard can offer as a result.
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The question of whether you’re “going to heaven” or “going to hell” just isn’t a helpful thing to build one’s faith on. Also, it’s not actually in the teachings of Jesus, or anywhere in the Bible — despite the fact that so many people (both inside and outside of churches) assume it to be.
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On the weekend we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Vince takes us to a Central American interpretation of Jesus' Parable of the Talents (or Minas or Pounds, depending on your translation). In it, Jesus suggests the God of the Universe is the God who resists injustice. So how might God be calling us to join in that?
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