TheRiverHopes

Yesterday, we looked at the term "social justice" and how a correct understanding it of it from God's perspective means "rightly ordered relationships (with God, with one another and with the earth) in order for His creation to flourish.   Here is a timely reminder of how knowing God's word and God's heart for justice transforms cultures, nations and the world!!! Billy Graham & Social Justice "Last week Billy Graham passed away at age 99. He is most celebrated for his evangelistic ministry having preached the gospel to an estimated 200 million people.  What often gets overlooked, however, is Graham's commitment to social justice. For a Southern Baptist preacher raised at the height of Jim Crow, Graham's opposition to racial segregation was both courageous and extremely controversial.  The opposition to Graham began in 1952 when he said, "There is no scriptural basis for segregation"—a direct refutation of popular the...

From Lyn Woodruff, posted in the River Prayer Reflections Texting Group. If you'd like to join, write to info@riversouthbay.org or post a comment. Wealth" can be found 1,453 times in 1,273 verses of the Bible "Justice," in contrast, appears 1,576 times in the Old and New Testament in 1,379 separate verses. Justice is mentioned twice as many times as "love" or "heaven" -- and seven times more often than "hell." By the numbers alone, it's obvious that justice is a pretty big deal to God. But what exactly is God’s heart for justice? Skye Jethani has currently unpacked this attribute of God in his “With God Daily” meditations and he has given me permission to share them with you all!!!  Thanks, Skye!! We hear the term Social justice all of the time.  And today, it has become a ubiquitous phrase that speaks more about politics than faith. Case in point:” A very popular news commentator recently told his audience, “I...

From Lyn Woodruff, posted in the River Prayer Reflections Texting Group. If you'd like to join, write to info@riversouthbay.org or post a comment. “It’s so weird to live in this world.  What a bizarre tension to care deeply about the refugee crisis in Syria and also about Gilmore Girls. It is so disorienting to fret over aged-out foster kids while saving money for a beach vacation.   Is it even OK to have fun when there is so much suffering in our communities and churches and world?  What does it say about us when we love things like sports, food travel, and fashion in a world plagued with hunger and human trafficking?” We have to remember that God “invented apples and beaches and sex and baby lambs”.... We have to remember that “God gave humanity many healing tools... that God gives us both Good News and GOOD times.... And those good times...they matter, they are to be consumed and enjoyed with gusto, despite suffering, even in the mi...

The Fasting that Pleases God Is Fasting For Justice Isaiah 58: 6-12 Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ “If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,  If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. Those from among you Shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Br...

The Fasting that Pleases God Isaiah 58:5-7 “Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loosen the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? " Mt. 9:14-17: "How is is that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?" Isaiah delivers the word of the LORD that God prefers another kind of fasting which "changes our actual lifestyle and not just punishes our body." Isaiah makes a very clear demand for justice, non-aggression, taking our feet off the necks of the oppressed, sharing our bread with the hungry, clothing the naked, letting go our our sense of entitlement, malicious speech, and shelterin...

“Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all.  And all ate and were filled.”   -Mk. 6:41-42 Jesus radically disrupts how the world was thought to be.  The wilderness, the “deserted place” in the story, was where there was no viable life-support system.  He thought he was going there to rest, but he was met by a big crowd of those who were drawn to him.  They believed he would indeed disrupt their failed world, though they knew not how. Jesus did not disappoint them.  He was moved with great compassion when he saw the hungry crowd.  He had his stomach turned by their need.  He engaged their hunger, because they lived in a false world without resources.   His disciples accepted the barren wilderness without resources as a given;...

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.”  Mt. 4, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4 We first see here God’s abundance in filling Jesus FULL of the Holy Spirit.   And we also see that it is the Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Jesus faced three temptations in the desert, all in His Humanity, and not in His Divinity! These three temptations remain universal temptations throughout history that all humans must face before we take on any kind of power-as Jesus is about to do in starting His ministry. They are all temptations to the misuse of power for purposes other than God’s grand abundant project for us. 1.  The first temptation to convert stones into Bread signifies the temptation to misuse our practical everyday power (the appetites of our flesh - when we are hungry for money, success, pride, lust, envy, wrat...

As we invite you to try on the Spiritual Discipline of Fasting this week, remember that As Henri Nouwen says, “We have to fashion our own desert (wilderness) where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions and dwell in the gentle healing presence of the Lord.  Without such a desert (wilderness) we will lose our own soul while preaching the gospel to others.” Clearly something special happens between God and his people in the wilderness! We, too, need to be strengthened by God’s intimate love and ministry to us—gifts that come to us in unique ways as we fashion our own wilderness through expanded practices of solitude, silence and prayer.  Lent, after all, is meant to help us return to our first love and to return with all our hearts.  It is a call to the desert where life is stripped down to its barest essence, where distraction is stripped away, and we give ourselves unreservedly to the Lover of our Souls. ♥️

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you that have no money, Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, And your labor for that which does not satisfy?” -Isaiah 55:1-2a As we are now settling into the beginning rhythms of Lent, we are continually being invited to ask ourselves, “Are we working for that which does not satisfy? Are we spending our money for that which is not bread? Lent is a wake-up call to remind us that EACH of us has been uniquely created to reflect God’s glory in the world He so loves! Each of us, created entirely unique....  WHY?  Because God is a God of abundance, and not a God of scarcity! He is the God who created MILLIONS  of different creatures, and BILLIONS  of different people-  NOT to curse them with scarcity, but to bring them all together in His abundant blessings!   WHEN...