As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s words in “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” honestly reflect, the world persistently works against peace and towards dominance and chaos. In the arrival of the Prince of Peace, we can still see how God’s peace perseveres and transforms unconquerably, though. While the privileged “peace through destruction and elimination” cycles between forces fighting to be at the top, those practicing care, solidarity and dignity for the downtrodden have never been defeated. And while empire always tries to take and accumulate more and more for its own comfort, it has never spread as far as the generosity and hope of those knowing another way of life is possible.

In general, we don’t normally tend to put our hopes and expectations on things without some level of impressiveness or dominance as proof concept. Yet God’s chosen arrival was vulnerable and amongst conquered people, and seems to care about a whole different way of defining power and what is important. It is encouraging when we feel like the least to be seen and have hope for something more, but can we also hope that our salvation comes the least and the last (at least as the world defines things)?

Faith calls us to follow and put our faith in God, but scripture also shows how frequently any of us, and even (and sometimes especially) those who are zealous in their excitement in seeing what God can do and in declarations of how great they think God is need to have their understandings of God converted from projections based on personal privilege and earthly power to the real values of the Kingdom. This is especially clear in times in the gospels Jesus lays bare that the question we must ask ourselves is not “Will I say Jesus is king?” but “Will I actually follow the kind of king Jesus really is?”

We know in faith that the balance of grace, empathy and forgiveness alongside justice, accountability and transformation can often feel difficult - with people regularly pushing towards assumptions in one direction or another. One oft quoted phrase in discerning this is Jesus statement to the woman caught in adultery he protected from those who had to face if they were without sin before stoning her: “go now and leave your life of sin.” We might hold to this as an excuse to remain in judgment, but what of the possibility that the emphasis is on dignity, freedom and new possibility in God’s Kingdom that can be looked forward to and lived into rather than shame or finding ways to lord over others?

A significant part of the amazing work of salvation is how God is pulling together a beloved community in the Kingdom of all different kinds of people - being reconciled to God and each other. However, that’s not always easy for us when people we might distrust and be worried about are included in that group. God has been doing this throughout history with God’s people, though, and we can participate in the process of redemption and trust God offers to experience that transformation for the thriving of us and all creation.

There are often a range of divergent voices claiming to represent God aiming to lay out what God cares most about, what the thriving God moves for looks like, and who gets to experience that as part of God’s people. This has been true going back to all the circumstances we read about in the Bible as well. And the Bible consistently shows what the people of God are encouraged towards and what the people of God are convicted about for misplaced priorities, yet we can still be tempted towards those same issues the Bible points people away from. Can we care enough about our faithful connection with God and our participation in the salvation life of the Kingdom to hear what faith expressions we may still need to turn from, and trust in the value of what God calls us to turn to - even if it may not seem as comfortable, flashy, or powerful as other options claiming to represent God?

Conversion is meant to have dramatic impact in our lives - throughout our lives as we’re called and formed to more faithfulness to God and experience of salvation life. We can focus mostly on positive feelings with this, but it is true that there are also things in our lives that we are tempted to hold onto, but that should be let go of and cut out for what is best. Sometimes folks have taken to calling some of God’s values coming to bear in our lives “toxic,” but that misses the point that God’s love and grace should be toxic to the parts of ourselves that get in the way of loving like God loves and experiencing the diverse community who are often overlooked that God’s Kingdom brings together.

We all are prone to looking to people that we can admire and be inspired by to help push towards our values, and that can even influence our sense of identity. There are plenty of examples of this in society, and we also may have figures of faith we look to in the Bible. This can sometimes take the form of viewing people as heroes that need to escape question or critique, and yet the Bible doesn’t do this with examples of faith - instead being honest about failure and frailty and encouraging us to see substantive faith of repentance, conversion, making things right and humbling continuing to be formed in the values of God’s Kingdom as we recognize our failures to live up to it. Can these values influence how we admire anyone and allow people to influence our values and sense of self?

Some people do have very dramatic conversion stories for their initial commitment to following God in their lives. Others may grow up in the church and not have such a big before and after. As we continue in faith, though, the dramatic transformation that faith is meant to have on our lives - including ongoing conversions for more faithfulness - can be taken for granted and normalized. Being “born again” or joining a whole new people group is a big deal, though, even if the language doesn’t have as much shock value today. Are we willing to let continued conversion to God’s values be as dramatic in our lives as that when it needs to be? Are we able to set our other identities and allegiances aside so they always come second to God’s values and we use God’s values to measure those camps, parties, and groups that expect us to go along and judge and ostracize those in other groups even though God also loves and includes them? It’s not the norm now, but it is implicit to salvation and Kingdom life.

It is commonly celebrated how conversion turns us away from what is in conflict with God and reconcile in relationship for our salvation. Sometimes we can mistakenly reduce this impact to something about only what we mentally agree with or feelings we have about God, but the examples of conversion in scripture also have concrete impact on people’s day to day choices, actions and lives as God brings the Kingdom more on earth as it is in heaven - for individuals and communities and creation. How can we faithfully pursue the conversions we need for that same impact and scope?

Conversion is a central idea to Christianity, but it can often get a fairly narrow conception or application. While the initial commitment to living life faithfully with God is vital, the Bible consistently shows continued conversions even of those who have been following God to be continually formed to be more faithful to God’s values. The prophet Jonah and the leaders of the early church responding to the question of how to integrate Gentile believers offer two very different examples of how to respond to these ongoing invitations to transformative conversion that we can learn from for living out our own faithfulness.

God has always moved within communities of God’s people with certain key values that help bind us together and form us to more fully participate in and embody the Kingdom. It is good to find opportunities to re-root ourselves in those values, show appreciation for ways people have committed themselves to the values that God has used for our edification, and to find inspiration for how to persevere together as God leads us. This was a great chance to be able to do that together.

Every year our church re-roots itself in our connections and practices together, as well as the values that God guides our church with, and we try to discern how best to embody all those things in the upcoming year. It is especially important to see how God holds us together as a community and is always rooting us through reconciliation and discovery with broader and broader community, even with those we wouldn’t expect - just as God always has done for God’s people and the manifestation of God’s Kingdom. Even when things are most overwhelming and disorienting, may we find hope and purpose in just those foundations.

God has given the amazing gift of coming close to us in the incarnation as Jesus, as well as remaining intimately with us through the Spirit today, and including us closely in work with God for the Kingdom going all the way back to creation. For whatever reason, though, we are often tempted to put other things between us and God, or to do that to other people in a way that can hinder them. With reminders in art and life of how we can do that even subtly, and reminders in scripture of how God looks to bring those barriers down, we can hopefully be as closely connected to and following God as possible.

“Speaking the truth in love” is important advice, and often necessary in a world where crazy and contentious things are frequently happening and people have very different ideas about what is happening and what should be done about it - even when those people claim similar identity, affinities and associations. Having a solid grounding in Godly values for discerning truth and expressing love is essential for this practice - and having some helpful inspiration from favorite songs and stories doesn’t hurt either.

We have a great hope for total fellowship with God and experience of fulfilled salvation life in heaven - a hope which also permeates our culture in many ways. There are also a lot different ways heaven is described in the Bible, with powerful but incomplete poetic language, and Jesus especially affirms to us an idea of God’s Kingdom being among us because of him, “on earth as it is in heaven.” How do we hold all this together and live in the reality of God’s Kingdom with others now - based most on God’s values over our presumptions?

Having a personal relationship with God is an amazing aspect of faith life, but it is also very important to remember that God relates to us in the context of the Kingdom that gathers people together and draws out how God has created each of us so that we can encourage and support each other for the full experience of salvation life. Like a strong cord of woven rope, or a body made up of all kinds of parts, or like a good, hearty stone soup, we can be thankful to God for how we are better together as connected through the Spirit.

There is a rich tradition and example of the practice of lament as a core and transformational aspect of our lives of faith. Because it deals with difficult and painful emotions and circumstances, though, lament is not something that is commonly lifted up and understood in the modern church. With reflections on scripture and contemporary examples like songs by Jelly Roll, we can still immerse ourselves in God’s gift of lament for our spirituality and see how the practice brings healthy expression for even the most challenging parts of life.

It often seems like it would be the most exciting thing to be called to be a part of things God is doing for the salvation and transformation of the world - but it makes sense that it can be intimidating, or stretching, to us, too. This is a pattern throughout scripture and Church history, but that doesn’t seem to deter God from still wanting to move and include us in what’s going on. Realizing how profound a question “what is in your hands?” can be for how God works, and seeing what God can do, can end up transforming all kinds of things.

It is often a fact of faith that we vacillate between states of boldness and bravado to go after something, and fear and confusion about what that will actually mean. We see plenty of examples of this in scripture - like with King Saul, Jonah and Peter. What helps us understand all that is involved in God’s values - both the beauty and the challenges - and find God’s support for us so that we might live faithfully and experience the fullness of salvation life, even when fear needs to be overcome?