Our journey out of bondage into freedom often makes us anxious. As we move toward the Promised Land, we find that we have sometimes fallen in love with those things that hold us down and harm us.
We don’t need a lot of resources to begin. Just eyes to see what we already have and put it to use for the Kingdom. When we do this, we join the Jesus movement, and we discover, again and again, how God provides.
General Convention is less about resolutions (as important as some of them were), and more about renewing the ties that bind us together as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement and reclaiming what our Presiding Bishop calls “a way of being Christian that looks like Jesus of Nazareth.”
“Lavish” implies an abundance and generosity we often don’t give God credit for. To lavish someone with gifts means to give more than that person could ever deserve, out of real generosity and love.
In the story of Lazarus at the rich man’s gate, who are you and I?
As Christians living in America today, we ought to be inspired by the highest ideals of this country. But we are also citizens of the City where Jesus reigns from the Cross as King.
True, Jesus knows our fears. He knows the worst of our fears, yet does not consent to them. He conquers them by dying and rising again.
Fear obscures our vision, so we don’t see who counts as our neighbors. Fear holds us back from what our faith tells to do: risking ourselves (and our lives if need be) for the people Jesus lived and died for.
As he prayed, I looked at his beautiful, gentle face and saw without any veil or cover his agony as well as his love. Who would not respond to a prayer like that?
By offering ourselves into God’s hands, we suffer no diminishment, but become fully ourselves.