Luke 21:5-19

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, year C

Questions

1. What words or phrases from the text struck me? What did I find challenging, encouraging, confusing?

2.Can you think of a situation where you had to respond to unexpected circumstances. How did you manage? How did you re-establish your balance?

3. Our world is facing the sort of turmoil we possibly haven’t experienced so vividly for a generation or more: wars, revolutions, earthquakes, droughts, floods, plagues, famines. Jesus seems to suggest it is an opportunity to bear witness. How might we do that?

4. Jesus says “not a hair of your head will be lost” (ref also lilies of the field, birds of the air). Clearly hairs, and lilies, and birds are being lost. What do you think he actually meant?

5. Sometimes we do not cope. Sometimes things go so disastrously wrong that we never recover. Where is God then?