Week 5 (Year 4, NL)

Samuel is a good leader, until he isn’t.

Who gets to complain?

The church doesn’t always value people as God does. Not even Mary.

The One who promised Moses perpetual presence is apparently someone to be trusted.

I’ve stopped trying to climb over it or knock it down. Now I just sit there.

Communion is not the only time we seek Jesus like a hungry baby.

People must have gasped when Jesus opened his mouth and said 'I am.'

Instead of glorifying the past, what if we treated the present as precious?

Offering the elements to the unbaptized can be seen as a development and not a revolution, but it is a significant change. Is it a good one?

The lectionary has focused our attention on bread for a very long time. One might think that five barley loaves transformed into a feast plus baskets full of leftovers would be news enough, but Jesus goes on to talk about the bread for another 36 verses. He would be a dream interview for today's 24-hour news shows, with their incessant need for commentary on the latest attention-grabbing headline.

Perhaps we should not be too hard on the people who ate their fill on the mountain and chased Jesus down on the other side.

Jesus offers signs of life in the midst of death.

Reconciliation requires relocation. To see the effects of our food choices, we have to get close to the land.