What's the aperture of your heart?

There's an ancient blessing that God gave his people. At the centre of this blessing is the smile of God.

John asserts that there is a throne in heaven and one who sits upon it and that that person is not me.

How then are we to live?

At the end of Joseph's epic tale stands a remarkable act of forgiveness.

How was this possible? How can we forgive today?

The difference the Holy Spirit makes.

There is an end to prison. God decides. God lifts up. God saves.

Joseph in Prison: Living well in the weight of the wait

Joseph knew God as present help. And future hope. 

He experienced his steadfast love. God had planted a dream in Joseph’s heart that couldn’t be uprooted. 

1. Have you spent time in “prison”? What was it? Are you in a “prison” now? 

2. What do you do when the “walls press in”, when the weight of the wait seems too much? 

Do you sulk (give up)? Do you strain to regain control (fight)? Or do you just try to ignore it through substitutes?
What does your sulking look like? What does your straining look like? What does your substituting look like? 

3. Who around you is most impacted by your sulking or your straining for control or substituting? How are they impacted? How do you know?

“In surrender, we give up control, but we do not give up agency.

Control is the ability to determine outcomes and circumstances. Agency is the exercise of our God-given, God-directed, God-empowered ability to take action. To use our agency is to initiate and create and take responsibility.” John Ortberg, Steps.

Do the opposite to emotion-driven, ego-charged desires

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
Luke 9:23-25

“That is why the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. 

And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”

C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity 

"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved" -Victor Hugo. Thanks Strahan Coleman for your amazing book, Beholding.

At this point in the story it is very clear Joseph is not in control. He's not the main character. God is. And God is with us in the pit.

Finding purpose is a crucial and elusive part of modern living. So how do we do it? Well.... maybe a deep read of Joseph's story is a good start.

Palm Sunday. The week before Easter the road to Jerusalem erupts with praise and scorn. Peace and bitter jealousy. What might this key event in the life of Jesus tell us about human's quest for the good life?

The Jacob we meet at birth is very different to the Jacob we see at life's end. How did this transformation occur?

Life is hard. We try to escape. We try to control. God offers a third way to live: trust in relationship.

Abraham lived that way. How was that possible?

Do you know the difference between a covenant and a contract? Understanding that difference will open up God's incredible grace in a fresh, fresh way...

Abraham is a wandering nomad. Then God appears and blesses him. What does God's action teach us about the nature of God, how he works and particularly the nature of blessing.

The Flood puts the problem of human evil front and centre. How will God deal with evil without destroying us when the evil runs right through our hearts?

Cain and Abel is an ancient story. Human jealousy remains lethal. So what's God's way out of this lethal tendency?

Expedia says we’re made to travel. What do you think we’re made to do?
Expedia is spending millions persuading us that we’re made to travel. They know that what we believe we’re made for will steer our choices about how we focus our dreams, spend our money and our time.
How would you finish this sentence? “I’m made to ___________”

In this session we compare the Garden of Genesis 2 with the Brickyard of Exodus 1.

The reflection questions referenced in the dialogue are the following:

Reflection

Where am I experiencing garden life?
(Walking with God, walking with others, nurturing and protecting. E.g. wholeness in relationships, peace in who I am, satisfaction in my labours…)

Where am I experiencing the brickyard?
(Brueggemann says, "We are all of us caught in a way of life that yields only frantic hostility and desperate effort, which cannot finally pay off." That's brickyard life. Life in the brickyard is marked by coercion, competence, quality, quantity and quota. The core question of the brickyard is Who's in charge? Eg. A nine year old with a demanding soccer coach, a junior salesperson whose targets constantly get ratcheted up, an unappreciated mother or wife)

In my relationships and work where am I nurturing and protecting? Where am I exploiting and attacking or neglecting?

What is one step I could take to shift to move from exploiting or attacking or neglecting toward nurturing and protecting? 

Garden life starts (but doesn’t finish!) with our hearts. What’s one change you could make this week to nurture the garden of your heart? 

We introduce Genesis with a bunch of visuals... (probably needed to be there!) But seriously there are plenty of reasons to love this book!

What is Viva about? What might 2025 hold for our community?