CONVERSATION STARTERS
Conversation Starters help us dig deeper, connecting Sunday’s sermons with our Monday lives. These prompts have been designed to help Community Groups grow in their relationship with God, with one another, and with their neighbors. Please know that these questions are meant to be a resource to you. You do not have to follow them verbatim or get through them all. We trust you to know your group and to ask the questions based on your group needs.

In Ecclesiastes 9:2-12, the Teacher continues to wrestle with the realities of death. In this portion of Scripture, he questions if justice is worth anything, since it lies within the shadow of death.

1. What stood out to you from Sunday’s sermon?

2. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is a question that we ask in our culture. How would you respond to that question?

3. How does the gospel of Jesus Christ and the promise of eternal life give us hope and joy in the midst of the unfairness, injustice, and brokenness in our world?

4. What is our role as gospel people in addressing the injustices and brokenness in our world?

PRAYER PROMPT
Thank God for sending us a savior, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins and put an end to all the injustice in our world. Pray that God would remind you that there is a reason to do good and live for Him in our broken world despite injustice. Pray that God would remind you that Jesus is going to return and make right everything that is wrong with our world.

Title: Justice Up in Smoke
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 9:2-12
Speaker: Andrew Jones, AndrewJ@cckc.church

> We all dig the same grave.

> We all roll the same dice.

> We will fight the same fights over and over again.

"I must confess, that dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare. Now I’m not one to lose hope; I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future. But I’ve had to analyze many things over the last few years and I would say over the last few months I’ve gone through a lot of soul-searching and agonizing moments and I’ve come to see that we have many more difficult days ahead and some of the old optimism was a little bit superficial. And now it must be tempered with a solid realism, and I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go." -Martin Luther King Jr.

> Justice matters deeply to God, despite the obvious evil in the world.

> Justice looks small and is often slow.

> Grace changes everything, and grace isn't fair either.