Hello again, Dive Collective! It has been so long since we’ve seen you, studied with you, sent you any news. So much has happened since we decided to take a break, and we will be telling you a lot about that in an upcoming podcast episode!

We have no idea the Kingdom outcomes of our lives of faithfulness and acts of kindness in the midst of our raging culture. Read what Judges and Ruth have to teach us about how God acts on behalf of those who long for Him and uses our lives to bring forth light.

This Holy Week we celebrate the promised seed of Abram. The fulfillment of the promise we have been studying all month in the life of Abram. What did Abram do to receive the promise of God? He responded to God’s call. Period.

As a country, we’re all in this together. As Christians, we’re all in this together. Or, we should be. But are we, actually? We, believers in and followers of Jesus Christ, the God-Man who came and turned the world upside down with His radical teachings, should look and behave differently than the world. But when it comes to politics, we often are just as divided and just as divisive. We wanted to find some resources that would be helpful in this election season, and what we found has been helpful in re-orienting our perspectives, re-aligning our thinking and our actions with our worldview

Bible versions. There are literally hundreds of them. As leaders of Dive Collective, we’ve been asked this type of question multiple times: Which versions do we use? Why? For what purpose? We wanted to address this topic with a basic overview of how Scripture is translated and some pros and cons of the various options.

I like having answers. I appreciate the ability to definitively determine whether something is one way or another. And I really like it when conclusions seem obvious, when I can put my finger on what I understand or believe about something. When we began our Bible Reading Plan this year, although we didn’t head into it with specific themes in mind, I was really looking forward to making connections.

His love is not a modest love, its a fierce love that obliterated the boundary of His holiness to draw us into Him in Christ. To let Him see us in our imperfect states, to hear our voices and their imperfect thoughts, to share our feelings in their imperfect forms is the only appropriate response to this kind of love pursuit. It’s surrender. 

We surrender so that He can lavish us with His love, remind us we are forgiven, wash us white as snow. 

It was this realization that God wants to be with me in all of it, that simply letting Him have access to all of the depths of me somehow results in fully falling into Him limp but full of life, and suddenly my lungs open and the universe reveals wide open spaces to breathe.

Evidence surfaces as I observe the discourse surrounding monuments coming down and flags being changed. Four years ago, the arguments I made, the feelings I had were so different, so predictable. But my feelings and thoughts are changing quickly and drastically; it’s all been strangely unsettling. But…

I’ve been more immersed in Scripture than ever and I’m being changed by words—His Word—the way only a book that is alive can do. Almost every line on every page has been filled with reassurances that He’s doing a work in me. He’s re-centering me and my identity.

These final lines in Paul’s letter to his beloved believers have been resonating in me since our Dive group met last week. His words call to those of us in the midst of the cultural and political turmoil, because it’s an offering of peace.