My thoughts (Tyler Connoley):

Jesus taught us to trust God. He called God Abba (Father), and taught us that God was a good parent who loved us and would take care of us. We see this throughout the parables and teachings of Jesus. More importantly, we see it in the way he lived his life. And today’s passage is the ultimate example of that. The King James Version of the Bible translates the words in his prayer as, “Thy will be done.”

That prayer — “thy will be done” — is a statement of radical trust. It says, “God, I know what I think I want, but I trust you to do what’s best.” Knowing what Jesus was facing that night and the next day, it is an even more amazing statement of trust in his Abba. Nevertheless, I didn’t really understood the true impact of this prayer until I met a woman I’ll call Dana.

The first time I visited Dana was shortly after her terminal diagnosis with cancer. In her late-fifties, death had come knocking too early, yet she faced her diagnosis with grace. After our first visit, in which we talked about some of her profound mystical experiences and her discontent with organized religion, I asked if she wanted to pray together. “I don’t know how to pray,” she said. “Why don’t you pray, and I’ll listen.” I did, and when I was finished, Dana added, “Thy will be done. I love you. Amen.”

Every time I visited Dana for the next few months, our visits ended the same way. I would say a prayer asking God for peace, strength, freedom from pain, or whatever else seemed appropriate that day. Then Dana would add, “Thy will be done. I love you. Amen.” I believe those prayers, prayed by a woman who claimed she didn’t know how to pray, summed up the attitude that Jesus asked us to have toward God — the attitude Jesus modeled for us in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Thought for the day: Jesus taught us to love God, and trust God’s will for our lives. I invite you to pray the prayer, “Thy will be done. I love you. Amen.” Meditate on it, and see how it changes your attitude toward the things that happen today.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts on this passage (Tyler Connoley):

In the passage right before this, a rich young man comes to Jesus asking, “What must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus tells him about the commandments not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to lie, to honor one’s father and mother, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

“I’ve kept all these; what do I still lack?” asks the man. He’s certain there’s something missing in his life, but he doesn’t know what it is.

Verses 21 and 22 are two of the saddest in the Bible: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

Then Jesus turns to his disciple and makes the statement we read today — it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. This seems awfully harsh, and the disciples rightly challenge Jesus, saying, “Then can anyone be saved?”

The disciples seem to realize that we all suffer from the same problem this man had. All of us have “riches” in our lives that get between us and God — tangible things that keep us from fully embracing God’s spiritual Kingdom. We’re like a camel that could go through the eye of a needle if it didn’t have that big body to deal with.

Sometimes these tangible obstacles to our spiritual health seem impossible to overcome — just like the rich young man or the camel — and yet Jesus says, “With humans this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Thought for the day: What obstacle is coming between you and God’s kingdom? Ask God to help you find the courage to shed it, so you can embrace God more fully.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts on this passage (Tyler Connoley):

It’s a phenomenon that happens in every high school movie, whether Rebel without a Cause, Grease, The Breakfast Club, or High School Musical. The kids in these movies separate themselves into cliques and then police their boundaries to make sure the “wrong type” doesn’t try to join their little group.

In this parable, Jesus makes it clear that God’s realm isn’t like that. As followers of Jesus, we are not to weed our communities, picking and choosing the people who fit and throwing everyone else out. According to this parable, a church that excommunicates people for their sins — real or perceived — is not being the Kingdom of God.

That part is easy to understand (if hard to practice). More troubling, I think, is the notion that some people are “weeds” who will be thrown into the fire at the end of the age. How do we square this with a notion of God’s grace and love? And, knowing this, how do we stop ourselves from cutting certain people off in our minds (you can probably think of some “weeds” in the public sphere)?

First, it’s important to recognize that people are not plants and God is not literally a farmer. Unlike the farmer in the story, God has the ability to transform weeds into wheat, and people have the ability to give up their weed-like pasts for a fruitful future. Jessica Rabbit said, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way,” but that’s not true of you or me, or the “weed” you thought of a minute ago.

Second, God’s time is not our time. We may be tempted to say that certain people are beyond redemption, but God has all of eternity to bring them around. It’s not up to us to decide when the harvest of this parable has arrived. It’s not up to us to stoke the fires. That’s God’s job, and my understanding of God is that the harvest fires will be a long way off (and maybe never), after all other options have been used up.

In fact, isn’t that the whole point of this parable? In the realm of high school musicals, and society-at-large, people are weeded out and thrown away. But, not so in God’s realm.

Thought for the day: Is there someone you consider a weed? Pray for God to help you see her as God does. If a weed is just a plant that’s growing in the wrong place, the Kingdom of God has no weeds, because we all belong.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Tyler Connoley):

Can you imagine having an experience like the one Jesus has in today’s Scripture? Imagine being baptized in the Jordan river. You’re plunged under the water, and as you come up for air with water streaming from your head, your ears begin to clear and you hear a voice: “This is my child, the beloved, in this one I am well pleased.”

What I wouldn’t give to hear God say those words to me — especially on those days when I don’t feel beloved, when I feel I could have done a better job, could have been a better person, should have known or done something different. Yet, God does call me a beloved child, every day. I just don’t always listen.

In Romans, it says “The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (8:16). The Gospel of John tells us, “To all who received the Word, who believed in Christ’s name, he gave power to become children of God” (1:12). Jesus repeatedly called God “Father,” and reminded us that we are also God’s children with him. When his disciples asked him how to pray, Jesus said to begin, “Our Father. . .” (Matt 6:9).

The Old Testament also testifies to this fact. God is “the rock who bore you in her womb, the God who fathered you” (Deuteronomy 32:18). Isaiah says, “O Lord, you are our father” (64:8). Again and again in Scripture we are taught that we are God’s children, God’s beloved, in whom God is well pleased. Every one of us who was baptized had God say those words to us, as the water ran down our head. And, every day, God repeats those words, whether we can hear them or not.

Thought for the day: God is saying to you: “You are my child, my beloved, in you I am well pleased.” Let that sink in.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

1. Things Are Not Always As They Appear
2. 525,600 Minutes
3. Good Girls Go to Heaven. Bad Girls Go…
4. To Fight for the Right

Today’s Scripture: Esther 4:1-9 (ESV-text and audio) (KJV) (The Message) What might God be saying to me?

My thoughts (Tyler Connoley):

This is the turning point in the book of Esther. In this chapter, the door leading to Esther’s triumph on behalf of the Jewish people begins to crack open. There are many heroes in the book of Esther — Vashti who stands up to the king, Mordecai the righteous cousin, and of course Esther herself — but the story would not have been possible without a eunuch named Hathach who shows up in Chapter 4. The key who unlocks the door to Esther’s triumph is an unassuming person of ambiguous gender. A transgender hero, right there in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures!

To understand this passage, you must first understand the black-and-white nature of gender roles in the story. In Chapter 1, you may recall, Queen Vashti throws a party exclusively for the women, while her husband has a party for the men. And when Esther becomes part of the king’s harem, she seems to be trapped in the world of the women. In this chapter, she’s unable to go to her cousin Mordecai, and he’s unable to visit her. He knows if he can get a message to her, she can go to the king, but as a man he has no way of entering her exclusively female world.

I also need to tell you a little bit about the role of eunuchs in the ancient Near East. (This was the subject of my Masters Thesis, but it won’t be wonky. I promise.) A eunuch in this context means a castrated man. In the ancient Near East, eunuchs were thought of as being neither male nor female, and were often given permission to guard — and cross — boundaries inaccessible to other people. For example, in the beginning of Esther’s story, we have eunuchs guarding the king and crossing the boundary between the royalty and the commoners. Eunuchs also guarded the sacred and profane borders of temples, as priests. And, naturally, eunuchs served as guards between men and women in harems.

So, when Esther needed to know what Mordecai was so upset about, she called Hathach the eunuch to carry the message. She needed someone who was neither male nor female to cross the boundary between her and Mordecai, and Hathach fit that bill. He was there to save the day, and turn the story in the direction of redemption for the Jewish people.

One more important thing to know about eunuchs: most were slaves who were castrated against their will. They didn’t choose to live as in-between people, that role was chosen for them. Considering Hathach’s place in the harem of the Persian king, this was probably true for him. The story of Hathach illustrates that people’s unique characteristics — even those parts of our story and our being that we didn’t choose and may not like — are usually the very things God uses to change the world.

Thought for the day: What boundaries are you able to cross that no one else can? Give thanks, be brave, and open those doors. What makes you unique may very well be the key that changes someone’s life.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Tyler Connoley):

This passage from Isaiah is a common reading for Advent. It’s associated with the Kingdom of God, and most Christians believe it is fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. The poetic images of the lion and lamb, the cow and the bear, and the child and the asp have come to be called the “peaceable kingdom.” It’s a popular image in art, as with Edwards Hick’s famous Peaceable Kingdom paintings.

This is what happens, we’re told, when we allow the Prince of Peace to rule in our lives and in our hearts. It’s also a vision of the future we can all hope for, when God will rule in the hearts of all women and men.

The Gospel passage is not one normally associated with Advent, but I think it says something important about how we too-often relate to the arrival (or advent) of the Prince of Peace, and to his peaceable kingdom.

Barabbas represented a way of approaching the world with violence. We’re told he was in prison for fomenting rebellion and for murder. But Jesus approached the world with peace. Even when questioned and flogged by the Sanhedren and Pilate, Jesus refused to lash out at them. On the cross, he asked God to forgive those who crucified him.

Jesus came preaching a new kingdom, but the crowds wanted the old kingdom — just with a different king. Given a choice between the Prince of Peace and a violent leader, the people chose violence. They shouted, “Give us Barabbas!” And we still do that today.

Thought for the day: Do you long for the peaceable kingdom prophesied by Isaiah? If so, are you choosing the way of the Prince of Peace or of Barabbas? The advent (arrival) of the Prince of Peace is here, but he needs followers to bring about his kingdom.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to start, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.