How can celebrating and giving the first part of our year’s grown food be helpful to us? Owen Lynch looks at the festival of Firstfruits, given in the Bible for Jewish people to mark a few days after Passover. It recognises how a food-growing community that has gone through a season where nothing grew could look forward to more fruitful life ahead. They didn’t wait for the whole year’s harvest, but made offerings from their first fruits in faith that new life had overcome the threat of death. What difference could that kind of faith make to us, and how can we practise it?
Read MoreWhat is so important about rest? Owen Lynch looks at what it meant for God’s people to be told and shown how to rest together, and what might be good for us to learn from this too. What difference would it make for us to create space for our own ways of practising a Sabbath rest, and how could we make a start?
Read MoreHow important are rituals to you? Owen Lynch shares about his and the other rituals around us which seem to shape our sense of who we are as well as guiding what we do. Moses led Israel into adopting rituals like Passover which brought people into a shared sense of history, identity and purpose. As Jesus shared his last supper through a Passover meal, he fed his followers with a lasting way to remember who he was, and who they were as a result. Can we find a new sense of ourselves by looking at communion like this, and do we enjoy passing this on?
Read MoreHow can we become more resilient to face life's challenges? Jess Pedersen looks at how Moses did this by learning to turn to God. Raised in a foreign palace, Moses grew up with a mix of beliefs and tried working out his sense of justice his own way. But his encounters with God showed the depth of love and support that he could receive from God to do almost unimaginable things and overcome incredible opposition to lead his people out of slavery. What could a close walk with God equip you for?
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