ICYMI: Glitch 2 // Acedia
If you missed Sunday's service or could use a refresher, here's a quick recap featuring sharables and takeaways from our gathering. Scroll to the bottom for the full sermon recording.
📖 Focal Scripture
🎯 Reflection
When Jesus asks, "Do you want to be made well?" he's excavating the painful truth that sometimes we've made peace with our paralysis—finding strange comfort in the familiar stories we tell about why change isn't possible for us or our world. The noonday demon of acedia doesn't just make us tired; it makes us forget how to want, how to hope, how to imagine beyond the edges of what we've always known. Yet in the thin spaces where the veil between heaven and earth grows transparent—in protest lines and communion cups, in forgiveness offered and received—Jesus keeps inviting us to stand up into a reality more expansive and beautiful than our numbed hearts have dared to dream.
🗣️ Key Quotation
“This is just what Jesus does. This is who he is. Constantly rewriting narratives, creating thresholds, disrupting the status quo, and igniting imaginations. Jesus is relentlessly inviting us to step beyond the stories that trap us, ensnare us, and leave us disenchanted.” — Brent Levy
🙏 Prayer
God of "once upon a time," who refuses to leave us in the grip of the noonday demon, rewrite the stories that have convinced us this is all there is and teach us to recognize the thin spaces where heaven touches earth, so that we might live as people of audacious hope in a world that profits from our cynicism, in the name of the one who is resurrection and life. Amen.
💡 Journaling Prompts
What stories have I been telling myself for so long that they've become my reality? ("I'm not creative," "Things never change," "I'm too old/young/busy," etc.)
Where in my life have I stopped saying "once upon a time" and started saying "this is just how it is"?
When was the last time I experienced a "thin space"—a moment where heaven and earth felt close together? What did that feel like, and how did it affect me?
➡️ Next Step
This week, capture "thin spaces" with your camera--moments where heaven and earth seem to touch. Look for acts of kindness, unexpected beauty, or signs of hope in unlikely places. Take a photo, then pause to notice how this moment counters spiritual numbness. In the evening, view your photo and pray: "God, thank you for this glimpse of your kingdom breaking through." These thin spaces remind us the world is more enchanted than our cynicism allows.
