A Day to Hope

“I don’t follow Jesus because I think Christianity is the best religion.  

I follow Jesus because He leads me into ultimate reality.”

- Rob Bell

"Jesus had given us the ideal eyes by which to see the real nature of reality"

-Richard Rohr

Today is Good Friday.  A day people like me solemnly reflect on the death of a man named Jesus.  This man, Jesus, I believe, is God in human form.  God, the Creator of the universe, that spark of Spirit in each of us, became like me because He loves me.  Because He desires relationship with me.  Because He desires me to desire Him.

Through Jesus, God teaches me how to connect with Him, how to connect with others, and how to live life to the fullest.  Through the incarnation of Jesus, humanity has been made holy.  Every person matters.

But I am broken.  We all are.  And it is easy to feel that hole in life.  It is a darkness that mocks me, causing me to question: is this really all there is?  Is life really only LuLaRoe, death and taxes?

No.  

I believe that, thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus, darkness has been conquered.  I can live in the light of the Spirit now and well after my body is gone.  I, like Jesus, can be fully connected with God, finally complete, broken no more, in perfect relationship with Him.

But more than belief in the life and death of Jesus is my hope in the life and death of Jesus. Instead of putting my hope in myself, or someone else, or my church or money or success, or even religion, I put my hope in the spiritual realm, in the ultimate reality.  In more.  In grace, in mercy, in peace, in unity, in love.

I put my hope in the way Jesus lived and the reason Jesus died.  I put my hope in the way Jesus made all things new.  How he showed us that death is a part of life.  It is rarely easy.  The darkness still exists.  But when choosing light, I have never been disappointed.  It is a good Friday, indeed.

"I have done what was mine to do; now you must do what is yours to do."

- Saint Francis