Week Three

Part 3: Under our shoes

Conversation starter

Where have you and your shoes been this last year or so? Chances are they have not roamed as far or as wide as they did in the previous year or so with our slippers having seen more active duty!

What communities have you walked through? Where have you stumbled, where have you leapt? Where are you heading? What are you leaving behind? What are you stepping into?

Read Psalm 116: 1-9

What does it mean to walk before the Lord (verse 9)?

Read James 3: 1-12

A small change in the angle of a rudder can make an enormous difference over time as a boat travels through water. When hiking a slight shift in compass coordinates can lead to us travelling way off course. In the same way sometimes the little things we say to one another, the small miscalculations we make, that seem insignificant at the time, can take us far from where we set out to be.

When our words have taken us far from where we want to be — when we are well truly lost — how can we use our words to get back on track, to rechart a course and get back to where we want to be?

Read Mark 8: 34-38

We end by unpacking this haunting phrase about taking up your cross. If picking up a cross is an uncomfortable image for us reading this now think how it must have felt for a people who lived in a community where crosses were an all too real threat of state sanctioned violence.

What do you think it means for us to today to take up our cross and follow Jesus?