Forest Hills Mennonite Church

Is patience a harmful response to injustice?

One way to think about peace is that it's the experience of nothing being missing and nothing being broken. When relationships seem deeply broken, how might God move us toward peace? Is it possible to escape seemingly endless cycles of retribution, revenge, and violence? 

Christians know an awful lot about what joy is not—how it's not the same as happiness or it's not circumstantial or it can't be temporary—but what can we say joy actually is? Drawing on emerging insights from neurobiology, perhaps we can say that joy is a communal experience, something that emerges when we're glad to be together. If that's true, then the fact that God is always near to us and always glad to be with us can transform our experience of togetherness, allowing us to rejoice in the Lord always.

We're all living through what one cultural commentator calls "a bitter age," one marked by divisiveness, polarization, and distrust. As followers of Jesus, what might change if we drew on an ancient roadmap for flourishing together, cultivating and sharing the fruit of the Spirit by practicing love, joy, peace, patience, and more? This Sunday, we embark on a nine-week journey into God's vision for our life together, using the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5) and stories of unexpected connections forged in the face of difference as our guide.

Jesus wants us well-rested. That's the promise we find in Matthew's Gospel, and its implications can radically reshape our lives. Pastor Jon is joined by Nita Landis, a spiritual companion, writer, and retreat leader, for a conversation about real rest. 

At Jesus' baptism, the evidence of God's presence couldn't be clearer: a voice from heaven announcing "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." As others begin to follow Jesus, though, their experiences are far more ordinary and every day, yet they still choose the path of discipleship. 

George Washington quoted Scripture frequently, and he quoted from the prophet Micah more than any other Biblical author. Looking ahead to God's preferred future, Micah envisions that "everyone will sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one will make them afraid." Is it possible for us to live into this vision?

"Is there enough?" All of have an automatic, often subconscious answer to that question, but we might not always be aware of the forces and ideas shaping our assumptions. Pastor Jon explores the subconscious ways we learn to interpret the world as a place of scarcity—and how God's goodness teaches another story.