25 GIU 2024 · Ecclesiastes reminds us that we shouldn’t be so confident in our understanding. The best we can do is remember that we were created for a season, for a time, and that our creature-ness will eventually come to an end. Seeing life from this angle brings with it a certain wisdom that helps us see beyond vanity. -Rev. Barrett Owen

25 GIU 2024 · At the end of the book, Job and God mend their divisive and frustrating relationships with humanity and each other. Job wants God to show up and right the illegitimate wrongs. God wants everyone to understand their place within God’s realm. Seeing how these relationships come to an agreeable end is the thing from which wisdom is made. -Rev. Barrett Owen

10 GIU 2024 · Despite our best attempts at living with wisdom, some of the most hallowed assumptions are proven false by experience. We often think wisdom supersedes experience, but not in Job. Experience re-authors our understanding of wisdom. It reminds us that real-time and real-emotions shape and color our understanding of God. Job learns this in difficult ways. How he process this pain is for us to understand too. -Rev. Barrett Owen

3 GIU 2024 · Proverbs 22:1-2 reminds us we must recalibrate our minds from thinking being rich is better than having a good name. Having a good name and being seen as in favor with others is better than being wealthy. -Rev. Barrett Owen

29 MAG 2024 · The Book of Proverbs is a positive, hollowed assumption about the goodness of life and the justice of God. Almost every section of scripture reminds us to live positively and with fidelity and hope. Proverbs has a way of using real-life applications to paint a picture of the past and ultimately our future. Out of the hundreds of proverbs available, Proverbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t84ZXH-Xcm0&t=745s offers a way in which we can live with the anxiety of our day but not be overcome by it. -Rev. Barrett Owen

21 MAG 2024 · Pentecost is the moment that the Spirit-promised becomes the Spirit-provided. Undoubtedly the third highest holy day in the Christian calendar, this day remembers when God’s spirit was poured out on all people, everywhere. -Rev. Barrett Owen

13 MAG 2024 · "Everything is moving towards eternity. All of our actions and hopes and theology and practices and all of our faith is moving us towards the ultimate end that we know as eternal life. And one of the things that 1 John reminds us is that when we engage with this God in the created order by following Jesus . . . we are given eternal life." -Rev. Barrett Owen

13 MAG 2024 · The beginning and end of everything is love. Another way to say this is, “Everything begins and ends out of love.” Love is at the beginning of everything . . . and love is what’s left after everything is gone. Love is before it all and through it all and after it all. Love is eternal. -Dr. Jim Everette

29 APR 2024 · God is love. For those who abide in love, remain in love, and invest in love, and inject love into their being . . . abide in God. And God abides in them. We invite God in, and God’s abiding love takes on new life in us. We could say, “Every time we love, or feel love, or share love, or every time we engage in loving acts . . . we become that which comes from God. We reflect God. Because we are what we eat. And since God is love, we are love. -Rev. Barrett Owen

22 APR 2024 · The God of the Universe, in all God’s great mystery and unknowing, that God receives us out of (and comes to us in) love. -Rev. Barrett Owen