We give up our lives so that we might live our lives through the lens of the gospel. We take up the cross, the burden of community so that we might live. And, ultimately, we take up each other’s cross.

You see, when we are faithful, we are faithful to God’s word, we are faithful to all that we are commanded to do. When we are faithful we do not preach division and discord but love, only love. When we are faithful, we lift up the poor, feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit the prisoner and so on.

This love, this love between two human adults can expand the boundaries of one’s perspective from just a sense of self, a sense of ego, to caring for another so much that our egos recede as we become one couple, one body.

Our faith carries us home and still, we are a people of many layers. Our public selves might not always show what is on our mind, what troubles us or brings us great joy even though we remain joyful; even though we remain troubled. Yet through our relationship with God, we are promised, WE ARE PROMISED, eternal life and spiritual life that makes us full.

It can be easy to be hard on ourselves by not forgiving ourselves or claiming we do not deserve forgiveness, but the difficulty in performing the work to heal relationships and heal ourselves goes hand in hand in healing a world that might sometimes skew towards anger and disruption.

We can change, and we can change radically; we can change so much in fact that those who knew us when, who knew Jesus when he was just his mother’s son might turn away.

The kingdom is like the mustard seed because it changes us, individually and more importantly all of us collectively. We are changed by the kingdom and so we create roots that will dig deep and branches that will provide shelter.

Yet we must understand too that if in our desire to protect those closest to us from strife by denying them the ability to be who they are and who God created them to be, then we are perhaps causing more harm than good, more pain than healing, more human judgement than love.

And our prayers too, perhaps they are not always answered to our satisfaction, but I do think they are answered by our becoming closer to God through those prayers. So pray. Pray as Jesus prayed. Pray because we are in the world and sometimes, we are not of the world. Pray to realize just how close you are to God.

Though church attendance overall might ebb and flow, the love we share does not. Love is a constant that prepares us for the ebbs and the flows and Jesus prepares us for love. If we know of renewal that stirs around us, then we need not be reminded of the resurrection for we are living within the closest approximation of it that humans can comprehend.

And charity, charity so that within those we help might burn the spark, the passion for Jesus we feel when we are drawn to the table as one body, in one name.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And he, Jesus, is love. Wholly, totally, and without exception, love.

We are doing God things when we offer up a shoulder upon which to weep beside the tomb; we are doing God things when we celebrate as we did just last week, the good news of the resurrected Christ.

All of this can start today, we can change the world for the better with small steps then big ones, we know we can do that and still, to think about that, well, it might make us a little nervous, fearful even.

The prophecies prophesied have been fulfilled. He bows his head. He is dead. His mother wails. He is no longer, He is now was. He is gone.

...we are not called to die, we are called to live and we will only live when we love, with or without understanding.

We can witness God everywhere in all of that and still, even when it is hard to notice those things, even when we feel down about our jobs, when we mourn the ones we love most of all, when our fists can barely shake at all that curses us for we are so angry at whatnot, we are never far from the resurrection.

We must acknowledge God in order to receive God, though the light switch is on the wall, we must flip that switch if we are to dwell in the light. So too, must we turn towards God’s light.

And it is in these seasons of change where I find myself in a rather reflective mood; wondering about change in general and my place within a world made new and yet filled with pride and love and awe.