What God added through Jesus is grace. Undeserved, unmerited, unearned grace. Through His birth, life death and resurrection, God has given back our lives to us, replacing that which was killing us — the law — with the grace and salvation that is only found in the lifted cross.
God has called us to be in relationship with him and with each other, and that relationship is based on a love which the law by itself cannot know or teach. It’s called grace. It’s the Two Universal commandments: to love God, and to love neighbor.
When God takes hold of someone, suddenly something is different. It comes with such authority, it is as if it that which he has planned for you has already been accomplished. You allow his grace to into your life, and it overtakes your life. This is God’s eternal presence living in you, now. This is the message of Easter.
The promise of Easter began with the promise of God when he said “never again,” after the flood and hung His bow in the heavens. It was a promise for life on earth. The second promise — the new covenant for which He let His Son hang on the cross — was for life in eternity; that we may die, never again. Is there any love more extravagant than that?
Dramatic miracles and heavenly visions do not create faith. Faith is something God plants in the human heart, and the light of Jesus illuminates it. But to truly experience it, we must some come down into the valley and work our way to the cross. That is where we see Him, in the face of all humanity.
In a same-day delivery world, we have lost the virtue of patience and the good things that come to us through it. Yet God has proven to us time and again that he has both today and tomorrow well under control, if we will wait on Him and live thankfully in the moment.
What’s more important? To be right or to be loving? We can model for the world the kind of behavior that blurs the lines that divide us and lifts up our oneness in Jesus Christ. It’s called brother keeping. And sister keeping.
The Kingdom of God is already here and is widening all the time. Each one of us has a part to play in it, and we must be ready to follow the call to serve in an ever-changing, impermanent world.
The word of God to you and to me is always a call to speak the truth. Sometimes that truth can be confrontational to those who will not hear it . Just ask Samuel.
Jesus spent his earthly life turning things upside down, showing God’s children there is a better way and inviting them to follow in that way, if only we will choose to do so. His love is stronger than anything in the chaos that surrounds us.