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.

We’re coming up on Easter. It was just one Easter ago when Covid struck fear into hearts around the world. All of the sudden toilet paper was gone and we suspected everyone of selfishness and hoarding. We questioned the morality of others based on the number of mask layers they wore—none being the most heinous offense. At the heart of it, we seemed to truly believe that our actions and behaviors could extend or shorten the number of our neighbors’ days. As if we have control over our God-given breaths which are known by Him alone.

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.

It’s almost spring! How do we know? We observe signs of it all around us in the cherry tree blossoms and the stores with blooming tulips for sale. What about growing something that is good to eat, like your own fresh greens? Things like bean sprouts, lettuce, bok choy, & kale are greens.

Each year I always look forward to planting the garden with my daughter. She loves to help plant, water, and harvest. This is a time that I will always cherish no matter how the garden turns out that year because, let’s face it, some years are better than others. Each year is a learning experience, and every year I try to learn a few new things.

It’s March—the season of sowing. There’s a marvelous beauty in the rhythm and harmonious work of the Sovereign Vinedresser and the man He made, in not just the toil of the soil but of the soul as well.

While I’m a total sucker for warm, sunny skies, I do love curling up by the fire with a hot cup of something and a good book, and I’ll take advantage of any excuse to spend my day in leggings and a hoodie. (Notice the constant presence of some sort of heat source?) But I have to say, winter’s biggest saving grace is the food. Soups, stews, fresh baked bread. Ultimate comfort food—which is pretty important when we’re freezing our tushies off.

Love God, love others. Period. Everything else hinges on these two commands; they wrap up the whole law. There are two things that I’ve been thinking through in regard to this.

How often have I ascribed more honor and glory and power to the gift rather than the Giver? How often have I distorted the pleasure of a gift from the hand of my Father into something selfish, something all about me? How often have I gotten caught up in the enjoyment of—then disappointed by—a thing that can never satisfy, rather than remembering that all good gifts point me to the only One who can fully satisfy?

When was the last time you had a conversation with someone you care about and you know disagrees with you on something important? (Facebook doesn’t count.) Take a moment and truly think about the last time you had a healthy dialogue of disagreement with someone you love. What was it about? How did it end? Was it with another Christian? How did everyone walk away feeling?

Our main goal here at Dive Collective is to make the Bible accessible. We want to equip you to study God’s Word on your own. Thankfully, we live in an era where access to printed copies of the Bible is available everywhere, often with just the touch of a button. We have a few favorites that we’ve been using around here, and we wanted to share them with you.

I’d been reading a book by Henri Nouwen and challenged to think about care—what it means, how I do it, how to do it well. Nouwen writes in Out of Solitude, “The basic meaning of care is ‘to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with’… we tend to look at it as the strong toward the weak, of the powerful toward the powerless… in fact, we feel quite uncomfortable with an invitation to enter into someone’s pain…”