Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church (1 Corinthians 5)

“For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

— David, Psalm 32

God Chooses the People and the Messenger (1 Corinthians 1:26-2:5)

“It is not that God cannot, or will not, save the affluent. But for Paul, the glory of the gospel does not lie there; rather, it lies in God’s mercy toward the very people whom most of the affluent tend to write off - the foolish, the weak, the despised. Such people do not fit well into the “suburban captivity of the church.” 

— Gordon Fee, Commentary, First Epistle to the Corinthians 

Peace Be With You (John 20:19-31)

“‘We do not know… how can we know the way?’
Courageous master of the awkward question,
You spoke the words the others dared not say
And cut through their evasion and abstraction.
Oh doubting Thomas, father of my faith,
You put your finger on the nub of things
We cannot love some disembodied wraith,
But flesh and blood must be our king of kings.
Your teaching is to touch, embrace, anoint,
Feel after Him and find Him in the flesh.
Because He loved your awkward counter-point
The Word has heard and granted you your wish.
Oh place my hands with yours, help me divine
The wounded God whose wounds are healing mine.”

—Malcolm Guite

The Work is Finished; Everything has Changed (John 20:11-18)

“The finality of Christ’s death on the cross - which left to itself, could be so soothing to us, in the somber glow of our wisdom and tragedy’s pathos - has been unceremoniously undone, and we are suddenly denied the consolations of pity and reverence, resignation and recognition, and are thrown out upon the turbid seas of boundless hope and boundless hunger.”

—David Bentley Hart