Potter's Clay (2016.09.04 Sermon)

April Karli settled us back into the lectionary for a week, and found much grace in a difficult passage.

Quotes and links mentioned:

“We also need to be clear on something else that is easily missed: spiritual formation is relational formation. It is easier, and therefore more talked about, to practice spiritual disciplines in an effort to feel God’s presence than to practice them in order to draw on the Spirit’s power to love well. Spiritually forming people may or may not regularly experience God with them. But spiritually forming people will grow to increasingly reveals God’s nature by how they relate.” — Larry Crabb
“If I had to name my disability, I would call it an unwillingness to fall. On the one hand, this is perfectly normal. I do not know anyone who likes to fall. But, on the other hand, this reluctance signals mistrust of the central truth of the Christian gospel: life springs from death, not only at the last but also in the many little deaths along the way. When everything you count on for protection has failed, [God] does not fail. The hands are still there – not promising to rescue, not promising to intervene – promising only to hold you no matter how far you fall. Ironically, those who try hardest not to fall learn this later than those who topple more easily.” — Barbara Brown Taylor