UCCA Sermons
The Pastor's Weekly Sermon
PENTECOST
May 24, 2026
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw
Some people have dubbed the age in which we live, “The Communication Age.” We carry devices in our pockets that can instantly send our words across the world. Likewise, we have nearly unfiltered access to the messages and opinions of millions at the tap of a finger. We can text, post, email, and comment at any moment, and so can others. However, many of us would say that despite all of these communicative capabilities, mutual understanding may very well feel harder than ever.
We all know the experience of saying something and feeling certain we’ve made ourselves clear, only to discover that another person has heard something different entirely. The words reached their destination, but the meaning did not.
In Christian tradition, Pentecost Sunday remembers a moment in the book of Acts when people from many nations began to hear a message in their own languages. Christians have understood this event in many ways throughout history, some metaphorical and others miraculous and literal. But perhaps one truth beneath the story remains timeless: people long to be understood, and also to understand, to be spoken to in a way that reaches their hearts.
Jesus’s words were often both enigmatic and relatable at the same time. We often see Jesus saying, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.” On one hand, Jesus was speaking only to those “with ears to listen,” those paying attention. On the other hand, he spoke in relatable terms instead of elaborate theological systems. He talked about seeds, lamps, birds, bread, vineyards, lost coins, and family tables. He spoke in stories that the people who were listening already knew how to enter. And anyone who did not understand and took the time to ask, Jesus explained readily. He wanted to reach people.
Religion can sometimes develop its own vernacular. So can institutions, communities, and even families. We can become fluent in words that make perfect sense to us and the “inner circle,” while becoming increasingly difficult for others to understand. Sometimes we assume that because we have spoken, we have communicated. But maybe we can allow Pentecost to remind us of something else. Love does not simply speak. Love translates, especially to those who are eager to take part in the communication.
A loving communicator might ask, “How can I say this so that another person can receive it.” A loving communicator might also ask, “How can I listen carefully enough to hear what another person is truly saying.”
To me, that’s the real miracle of the Pentecost. It isn’t strange, unintelligible speech or a magic Google Translate that suddenly appeared in the minds of first century Palestinians. Perhaps the miracle we’re supposed to get from this story is the miracle of effective communication, of understanding.
I hope that we can all learn to be better communicators, and to communicate using godly principles. May we learn to speak with kindness, listen with patience, and hear one another more deeply, caring more about what message someone is trying to convey than about formulating our own responses.
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
POPULARITY CONTEST
May 17, 2026
“Avoid popularity; it has many snares, and no real benefit.” – William Penn, Quaker theologian, religious freedom advocate, and founder of Pennsylvania.
What a statement from a man who was expelled from Oxford for protesting compulsory chapel attendance and arrested for practicing Quakerism and speaking against the doctrine of the trinity. He spent his life advocating for freedom of conscience and the dignity of the individual soul, and he suffered much for his unpopular ideas. His contemporaries, on the other hand, didn’t suffer for their popular ones.
We now live in a culture even more fascinated with popularity. Social media teaches us to measure value in likes, shares, followers, and applause. The louder voice is often treated as the truer one. The more popular opinion is framed as the better opinion. Even small things become battlegrounds for approval. Mention liking an unpopular movie, book, or perspective online, and you’re apt to see some ridicule following quickly. Many people learn to remain silent to avoid becoming targets, or find themselves changing their views, maybe unconsciously, to match the ones being pushed on them.
But popularity has never been a reliable measure for truth or goodness.
History reminds us of this constantly, even outside of Penn’s story. Harmful ideas have often become popular because they were backed by power, fear, wealth, or coercion. So many religious movements have spread, not through love or understanding, but through force and intimidation. Look at the pattern of conquest, crusade, and suppressive legislation! Even today, some voices maintain influence by warning people what will happen if they leave, question, or disagree, or indeed if they do not accept and join. Fear has a way of gathering crowds. Condemnation has a way of creating conformity. But neither necessarily produces goodness or truth.
The early Christians pointed us toward something different.
In the First Epistle of John, we read, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Fear and love are entirely in contrast, according to the early followers of Jesus. Fear may control people for a time, even a long time, but love is what transforms them. Fear narrows the soul. Love opens it.
Jesus himself even warned about the dangers of universal approval and popularity. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.” What a statement by our teacher! It reminds us that popularity and righteousness are quite often not companions at all. Sometimes, the voices most celebrated are simply the voices telling people what they already want to hear, “tickling their ears” as it were.
The call of faith is not to chase approval, dominance, or influence. It is not to win popularity contests. It is not to abandon our goodness when the world demands fear, hate, and harshness in the name of our teacher Jesus. The call of faith is to love God and love our neighbors. Period.
Sometimes that path may be applauded, it’s true. But that will not consistently be the case. I’d venture to say that most times, this path may seem quiet, overlooked, or even downright unpopular. But kindness does not become less true simply because it is unfashionable. Compassion does not become less sacred or less of a calling because it lacks a crowd. Freedom of conscience does not become less holy because others mock it.
The measure of faith not in how loud it can shout, nor in how many people it can pressure into agreement. The measure of faith is whether it produces love, peace, humility, and freedom in the heart.
Those are not things that need to be forced upon anyone. They simply need the ice around them to melt away.
“The fear of others lays a snare, but one who trusts in the LORD is secure.” – Proverbs 29:25
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
MOTHER’S DAY 2026
May 10, 2026
“Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.” – Stevie Wonder
“From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.” – Marcus Aurelius
“My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted thee seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.” – Michael Jordan
There seems to be a consensus among high achieving people on the importance of the contribution of mothers. On this Mother’s Day, I’d like to slightly change things up and focus on honoring the women whose love, patience, strength, and compassion help shape so many of our lives in ways both large and small.
Long before we can explain goodness, or understand the lessons of Jesus, many of us first encounter goodness through the care of a mother. Through encouragement. Through comfort. Through guidance. Through quiet sacrifices made every single day without recognition. Mothers are often our first teachers, especially in the lessons of kindness, resilience, forgiveness, and love.
It is perhaps no surprise, then, that scripture itself sometimes uses the language of motherhood to speak about God.
Consider Isaiah 66:13, where God is quoted as saying, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” What a beautiful image that is.
We often speak of God as Father because that is the language used by the ancients, who admittedly lived in patriarchal societies, when they described how they understood God. It’s a language we inherit through tradition and Scripture. Yet the Bible also recognizes something deeply sacred and divine in the nurturing and compassionate love of a mother. When the prophet Isaiah wanted to describe divine comfort, he reached not for the image of a father, but for one of the most tender human experiences imaginable: a loving mother comforting her child.
Elsewhere, Scripture speaks of God in that motherly role, carrying, sheltering, feeding, protecting, and refusing to forget His people. In Isaiah 49:15, we read, “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these might forget, yet I will not forget you.” The message is clear. Divine love is not cold, not distant, not merely authoritative. It is compassionate, protective, patient, steadfast. The love of God includes the same nurturing spirit that we so often see reflected in mothers, except to an inexhaustible degree.
A good mother teaches with love more than she rules with an iron fist. She teaches reassurance and courage. She teaches us how to care for others and how to rise again after hardship. She reminds us that gentleness must not be seen as weakness, and that love is perhaps the strongest force in the world.
Today, we give thanks for mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, adoptive mothers, those who wish to be mothers, and all those who have shown the world a mothering spirit through their care and compassion. We want them to know that their influence reaches farther than they may ever know. And, perhaps, in their love, we may all catch a glimpse of the very heart of God.
“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother.” – Psalm 131:2
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
OUR PART
May 3, 2026
“Duty is ours; results are God’s.” – John Quincy Adams, founding member of All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, DC
“Duty is ours; results are God’s.” It’s a simple statement, but like many simple statements that last, it runs against how most of us instinctively live.
Many of us, I think, measure our lives by results. It’s just the society in which we live. Did this work? Did this succeed? Did it make a tangible difference? When the answer is yes, we tend to feel justified. When the answer is no, we question the effort, the purpose, or even our very selves. Over time, this way of thinking can become exhausting. It ties our sense of worth to outcomes that are often outside of our control.
The difficulty is that results are rarely as predictable as we would like. The hard reality is that effort does not always lead to success. Good intentions are not always received well. Care, patience, and integrity do not always produce visible or immediate returns. If we insist on trying to control results, we take on a burden that reality simply does not allow us to carry.
The question that follows, then, is where responsibility actually lies.
There is a parable attributed to Jesus that offers a useful picture, though it is often cited and interpreted in other contexts than this. A farmer goes out to sow seed, scattering it broadly. Some falls on hard ground and does not take root. Some falls among obstacles and is choked out. Some falls on good soil and grows. While one interpretation is offered in the Biblical text, but there is another angle that is not always considered.
The farmer in the story does not appear to adjust his method based on the terrain. He sows everywhere. The emphasis is not on controlling where the seed will grow, but on the act of sowing itself.
If we look at the story in this way, it suggests that the work of a life is not to guarantee outcomes, but to act well across the full range of circumstances we encounter. To live with integrity not only when it is likely to be rewarded (such as when seed is sown on good soil), but also when it is not. To be steady in character, even when the environment is not steady in return.
I’m not suggesting that outcomes are completely irrelevant. They matter, and they absolutely can inform how we act going forward. The point is that they are not entirely ours. They depend on conditions that we do not control: timing, context, other people, and even chance. Confusing influence with control leads to frustration.
A more grounded approach is to focus on what is actually within reach: how we act, how we speak, and the care we bring to what is in front of us. These are not small things. Over time, they define the shape of one’s life.
The “duty” that Adams spoke of is not a rigid obligation. It’s an orientation. It’s the decision to act well, regardless of whether the result is visible or immediate. It’s the willingness to continue sowing the seeds of a godly life even when much of the ground with which we interact is unresponsive.
A godly life is not detached; it is not indifferent. It is fully engaged in doing what is good. It’s simply not dependent on other people or additional external factors. It allows a person to continue to contribute without being consumed by whether every effort succeeds. The hard truth is that most of us will never see the full results of what we do. Some things take root long after we have moved on. Some will never take root at all. But the work remains the same. And we can trust that, by the providence of God, some of what we sow will take root.
“Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act.” – Psalm 37:5
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
REFLECTION
April 26, 2026
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton
Light is one of those ideas that appears simple when you first think about it, until you dig deeper and ponder it more carefully. We tend to associate light with clarity, goodness, or truth, but rarely stop to consider how it actually moves.
This quote suggests two roles for someone looking to spread light: to be the source of light, or to reflect it. At first glance, it might seem like being the candle is the higher calling. To generate light, to originate something good or pure, to be the one who illuminates. But most of life really doesn’t work that way.
Very few people are able to be constant sources. Even the brightest among us depend on something beyond themselves. Energy fades, clarity and focus waver, perspective narrows. If everything depended on us producing light at all times, most of us would find ourselves exhausted really quickly.
The alternative is quieter, but is not less important and is really the way God intends this whole light relationship to work. To reflect light is to recognize it, receive it, and orient yourself in such a way that the light can be seen by others in and through you. This does not require perfection or constant strength. It requires attention, openness, and a willingness to not be the center of everything. Most of all, it requires the ability to reorient yourself from time to time when you recognize you aren’t shining as much as perhaps you have before.
There is a line attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: “If they ask you, ‘Where do you come from?’ tell them, ‘We’ve come from the light.’” There are many ways to understand that statement, but however one does, I think it suggests that light is not something we create ex nihilo, from nothing. It’s something not that we create, but that we participate in. It’s something we are connected to.
Maybe the distinction between the candle and the mirror is softer than it originally appears. A person who reflects light well may very well become, in a way, a source of light to someone else. Likewise, a person who appears to be a source of light, in reality, is always drawing from something they have first received.
We can say the same thing about our lives walking with God.
If we orient ourselves toward what is clear, steady, and life-giving, then over time, that will begin to show in how we speak, how we act, and how we respond to others. It doesn’t have to be dramatic or even constant. It can be in small, consistent ways that accumulate. If we orient ourselves elsewhere, toward darker things, the opposite can also be true.
When Jesus preached on becoming new and reborn, he was using a common literary device meant to show us the importance of our alignment, the importance of paying attention to what we are facing, what we are absorbing, and indeed what we are passing along, whether consciously or not.
In that sense, light is not something we have to chase. It is not something we must exude effort to manufacture. It is something that is already around us. We can learn to notice it, then to carry it, then to reflect it via our lives.
“It is You who light my lamp; the LORD, my God, lights up my darkness.” – Psalm 18:28
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
OUT OF CONTROL
April 18, 2026
“Some things are under our control, while others are not under our control… in a word, everything that is not our own doing” – Epictetus, Enchiridion
This is a simple distinction that many of us miss.
We tend to believe we have more control than we actually do. We try to manage outcomes, shape other people’s responses, and secure the future against uncertainty. We plan, we worry, we rehearse. And when things do not unfold as we wish or as we expect, the result is frustration, anxiety, or a sense that the world is somehow wrong or that we may have left something undone.
We must realize, though, that much of what we try to control was never ours to begin with.
We cannot control how others think, how they respond, or what they choose. We do not control timing, chance, or the broader movements of events. We can influence some things in small ways, but influence should never be confused with control. Treating influence as control places a weight on us that we were not built to carry.
What we do have is admittedly more limited, but it is also more reliable. We have control over how we respond, how we act, what we give our attention to, and the kind of person we choose to be in a given moment. Those are not small things, they’re everything we’re meant to focus on. They are the foundation of a stable life.
Trying to control everything is of course futile, but the real problem for us is that trying to control everything eventually breaks us. It creates a constant tension between what is and what we decide (in our infinite wisdom) ought to be. The wider that gap becomes, the more pressure we feel if we try to take control. A person can spend their entire life trying to close that gap, only to find it never fully closes.
There’s a healthier way to stand.
It begins by recognizing the limits of control, not as a failure, but as a fact. When we accept reality as it is, our focus shifts. Instead of trying to manage everything, a person learns to act well within their own sphere of control. Those things we can’t control become merely the terrain in which we learn to live good lives.
Jesus is recorded as saying, “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will worry about itself.” Nobody is certain what tomorrow holds, and worrying does not give you any more control over tomorrow. What you can control are your attitudes and actions today, right now. Jesus called his disciples to live in the present. Today, we might call that living a grounded life.
A more grounded life isn’t passive, but it is selective. It takes responsibility where responsibility is real and releases what was never ours to hold. It allows uncertainty to exist without treating it as an emergency that requires all of our attention. This does not remove difficulty, but changes how we meet it.
A person who follows Jesus in this teaching understands what is within their control and therefore stands differently than the anxious world today. Such a person is not pulled in every direction. They are not dependent on everything going their way. They act where they can, and they accept where they must. They trust that in God’s universe, all things will work together for an ultimate good.
Jesus wished his followers to be stable people. Let’s rise to that challenge.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
WHERE IS YOUR ATTENTION?
April 12, 2012
“Where focus goes, energy flows.” – Tony Robbins
In a world of distractions, it’s easy to overlook our attention. We often think of our lives in terms of major decisions or the external events that happen. In practice, our lives are more directly shaped by something quieter: the steady direction of our attention.
Attention is not just what we notice, as in passing. It is what we return to. It’s what we dwell on, what we focus on, what we rehearse, what we allow to occupy our inner space. Over time, the patterns of our attention, our focus, organize how we interpret the world and how we understand others and ourselves.
Attention has a kind of magnetism, a kind of gravity. Wherever it settles, it begins to pull our experience in that direction. If our attention is constantly drawn to what is uncertain or lacking, life begins to feel unstable or unfulfilled, even when circumstances are manageable. If we consciously direct our attention toward what is present and what we can control, life becomes more grounded, even when our circumstances are difficult.
I’m not suggesting denial or forced optimism. I’m talking about placement. Where attention goes, posture follows. A person who repeatedly attends to their fear will eventually stand in a fearful way and allow fear to govern their life. For a person who trains attention toward clarity, toward steadiness, toward compassion, and away from the things in life over which they have no control, such a person will begin to stand differently over time.
Jesus is recorded as saying, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34). This is an astute observation. What we treat as significant, what we return to again and again, becomes central to our lives. Attention and value reinforce each other. We attend to what we value, and we come to value what we repeatedly attend to.
That raises a more practical question than what it is we believe. The better question may be this: “What do you actually give your attention to, day after day?” Because that is where our lives are being formed and the place from which we grow.
If attention is constantly scattered by distraction, futile comparison, and outrage, life becomes reactive and unfocused. If attention, though, can be brought back, deliberately and repeatedly, to what is real and actionable, life becomes more coherent and purposeful. I’m not saying it becomes easier, but maybe it becomes clearer.
This is not a one-time decision. It is a practice, a discipline. As attention drifts, we must consciously return it. It will drift again, and we must return it again. Over time, this repetition becomes a habit and shapes something stable and resilient within us.
We do not control everything that happens around us. But we do have some influence over how we look at our circumstances, and how we respond to them. We certainly have influence over what we return to, what we focus on, and what we allow to take root within ourselves. That is how a life takes shape.
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
Executive Pastor, Unitarian Christian Church of America (UCCA)
ANASTASIS
April 5, 2026
“For I remember it is Easter morn, and life and love and peace are all new born.” – Alice Freeman Palmer, first female college president
Today is Easter Sunday; happy Easter everyone!
Easter has long been told as a story about something extraordinary that happened to one person long ago. But there is another way to approach it, one that involves all of us, one that speaks to something deeply human and immediately relevant.
At the center of the traditional Easter story is this idea of resurrection. When Jesus is recounted as speaking about “resurrection” in the Gospels, the Greek word used is anastasis. It comes from two parts: ana, meaning “up” or “again,” and stasis, meaning “standing” or “one’s position.” At its most basic, it means “to stand up again,” or perhaps to take on a new way of standing.
That’s a simple idea, but not a shallow one, and not the one traditionally presented when this idea is relayed in a religious context. There are moments in life when we are brought low by loss, by fear, by doubt, by failure, or by the weight of the world around us. I know I experience this almost chronically! Something in us collapses. Our footing gives way. We are no longer standing in the same way we once were.
But people do stand again.
Not always quickly, not always easily, and not always on the first try, but they can and they do. Often, they do not return to the way of standing they once had before. There is a shift, a new stance, a different perspective, a deepening. A different kind of posture emerges, one that is more flexible and living and able to withstand, as Shakespeare put it, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
Maybe before we were less full of life, instead embodying something of a brittleness, like a fallen tree branch that has lost its green-ness and elasticity: its life. When our footing gave way, we broke instead of bent. But with a new posture, a new stance, we are full of life, like a living green plant that does not break but bends and returns to its posture.
This is how I understand resurrection on this Easter Sunday, as a transformation within nature. To “rise” is to find a new way of standing in the midst of a world in which it is easy to be kept down. This “new life” can move us from fear to trust, from resentment to release, from fragmentation into a more grounded and integrated way of being. We become connected to all life around us rather than cut off like the dead branch. Resurrection, anastasis, is not about escaping this life, but about inhabiting it differently, more fully.
Easter, then, can be something we all participate in. It can be something we recognize right now, in the present. It is not even contained in a single Sunday. It is a pattern that repeats wherever life is renewed, wherever a person finds the strength to stand again, and to stand differently.
This isn’t to say that life will become easy, or that we won’t be affected by loss, fear, uncertainty. These are natural parts of the human experience, of human life. But they do not need to have the final say in how we live. A person who learns how to “stand again” carries a different kind of stability, a resilience that allows them to eschew rigidity and fragility, becoming more alive and responsive. You will not be untouched by hardship, but you needn’t be defined by it.
Easter, for me, is about noticing something: the life and renewal we see in the nature of the beginning of Spring that is all around us right now. It’s an invitation to see that renewal is possible, that new life is not something distant, abstract, or supernatural, but something that can emerge within us and around us. It asks you and me, “how will you stand in the midst of your own life?”
If Easter means anything, it may simply be this: that life has not finished with us yet.
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
MORE THAN WE CAN SEE
Mar 29, 2026
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11
Human beings are a different people than we once were. Once people exchanged ideas to learn from one another, explore different viewpoints, and find out what we can and can’t know. Now, we seem to be an information-driven and argumentative people. When we have so much knowledge at our fingertips, it’s can be hard to accept that there might be things we don’t or can’t know. At the same time, we’ve become obsessed with “being right.” Even when presented with evidence contrary to our current understanding, we tend to “dig in” and keep arguing for our own preconceived ideas.
It’s kind of natural, though. We want things to make sense, and in the information age, we want things to make sense NOW. We want clarity about the world around us. More to the point, we want clarity about who we are, where we are, what God is doing, and how everything fits together. When clarity isn’t there, it can feel like something is wrong, as though we are not trying hard enough to learn or as though we are missing an answer we should have found by now.
But Ecclesiastes offers us a more classic view of things. It suggests that life does have a semblance of order and meaning, even when it isn’t visible to us on demand. “Beautiful in its time” is not a promise that everything will feel right in every given moment. It is a reminder that our view is shaped by our circumstances, by where we stand. We do not always stand at the precise place where things come into focus.
At the same time, this verse names something human. We ARE drawn to meaning. We look for patterns, purpose, and connection because something in us reaches beyond the immediate. We have the capacity to analyze the past and look to the future. We have the capacity to conceive of the things that are not in our immediate presence. That longing for patterns and purpose isn’t a flaw, it’s a byproduct of our human capacity. It’s often what keeps us searching, growing, and paying attention.
Yet, the verse is wise in its clarity about our limits. We are not able, nor are we meant, to see the whole of what God does throughout the whole universe from the beginning to the end of time. This isn’t a failure on our part. We haven’t tried too little. We’re just not born with the capacity to hold the entire picture at once.
Maybe faith is not about resolving that tension and trying to gain all the answers about everything so we can always be “right.” Maybe it’s about learning to live with the reality of our limitations, being honest about the tension of wanting to know but not being able to. We cannot force answers where none are available and we really should not mistake uncertainty for failure. There can be trust without full explanation, and there can be meaning without full understanding.
In the meantime, our work remains. Even in uncertainty, we can still live with integrity, treat others with care, and move in the direction of what is good. You do not have to understand everything to live a humble, faithful life. Not knowing does not place you outside of meaning, even if you don’t fully grasp it.
“I do not occupy myself with things too great and marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul.” – Psalm 131:1-2
Rev. Dr. Brian J. Kelley
SPRING BLOSSOM
March 22, 2026
“I will be like the dew to Israel;
he shall blossom like the lily;
he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.
His shoots shall spread out;
his beauty shall be like the olive tree
and his fragrance like that of Lebanon.
They shall again live beneath My shadow;
they shall flourish as a garden;
they shall blossom like the vine;
their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.” – Hosea 14:5-7
What stands out to me in this famous, poetic passage from the prophet Hosea is that there is no single picture of what growth looks like.
The same source, God (here metaphorically described as dew), produces very different outcomes. Some are compared to lilies, others to deep-rooted trees, others to spreading branches, others to fruit-bearing vines. The passage doesn’t try to resolve that into one model. It simply presents a range of ways that life can take shape.
That matters, because we often assume that spiritual growth should look one certain way. We look for consistency, for recognizable patterns, for something we can measure. And when our own experience doesn’t match what we expect, it’s easy to think something is off.
But this passage suggests otherwise.
If God is the one giving life, and if that life expresses itself in multiple forms, then difference is not a problem to solve. It’s part of the design.
The other important detail is how God is described. Not as a force that directs or harshly corrects, but as dew. Dew doesn’t impose structure. It doesn’t determine what the plant will become. It simply provides what is needed for growth, and the growth follows according to the nature of the plant.
That’s a very different picture of faith than one built around pressure or comparison.
It suggests that growth is not something we force into a particular shape, and not something we measure against other people. It’s something that develops over time, in ways that are consistent with who we are.
So the question is less “Am I growing the right way?” and more “Am I actually growing?”
Because the passage doesn’t require you to be a lily, or a tree, or a vine. It assumes that whatever form your life takes, it can still be sustained, still be rooted, and still flourish.
As we enter the beginning of Spring, the season makes this easier to see, but the principle itself isn’t seasonal. Not everything grows the same way. And it doesn’t have to.
“The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God.” – Psalm 92:12-13
Rev. Brian J. Kelley