Conduits, Not Barriers--March 7, 2025

Conduits, Not Barriers--March 7, 2025

"We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God..." (2 Corinthians 5:3-7a)

Here's a good general rule for the life of faith: don't set up any hurdles to make it harder for anybody else to encounter the love of God.  Just don't.

Our calling as Jesus' witnesses in the world is actually just the opposite: to remove obstacles that might possibly get in the way of God's grace.  Ultimately, any of those obstacles, hurdles, or barriers prove ineffective, but even in the mean-time, why would anybody want to impede the love of God, right?  Like Westley says in The Princess Bride, even "death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while."  God's love will eventually reach into every corner of all creation, permeating every last intergalactic expanse, reaching between every set of quarks, and seeping into even the stoniest of hardened hearts. Why would any of us dare to get in the way?

The apostle Paul models the same thought process here in these words that many of us heard back on Ash Wednesday just the other day in worship.  As he is writing to the church in Corinth, he makes the point that when he and his fellow ministry partners were there in Corinth, as they were first telling people about Jesus and beginning a Christian community there, they were intentional about not putting up any obstacles that could have potentially become a stumbling block keeping someone else from hearing the gospel's good news of God's love in Christ. Paul and his companions were willing to work long hours, cover their own costs (rather than raise the suspicion that this Christianity thing was a get-rich-quick scheme from fly-by-night schemers), and bear the violence and brutality of both Roman soldiers and local police when they found themselves arrested, jailed, or beaten for "stirring up trouble" and "turning the world upside down."  They committed to treating others with love, kindness, patience, and truthfulness, all as ways of removing any possible barriers that could have turned someone away from wanting to know about the Jesus that Paul announced.  It's not that Paul saw himself as a salesman who had to close the deal (the gospel is absolutely NOT a "deal") or schmooze potential converts.  But rather Paul knew that as he brought the message of Jesus to people, he would be one of the first faces and personalities that others would connect with this Christ Paul talked about, and he certainly did not want anybody saying, "Why would I want to hear about Jesus, when the guy telling me about him is such a jerk?"

So Paul committed not to add any obstacles, roadblocks, or barriers that might turn somebody away from wanting to hear about Jesus or be drawn by the pull of grace.  Nineteen centuries before Gandhi's famous line, "I like your Christ. I do not care for your Christians--your Christians are so unlike your Christ," Paul knew that it was a damn shame to be the reason that somebody else decided they didn't want to learn any more about Jesus.  So Paul did something about it. He committed to a way of life that didn't add obstacles, but rather was willing to endure ridicule graciously, to bear suffering patiently, and to respond to lies and misinformation from others truthfully.  He vowed not to return evil when evil was shown to him, and he taught those who were being trained as leaders alongside him to follow the same example.  Paul absolutely didn't want anybody to have reason to say, "I was interested in the gospel at first, but then I met a Christian named Paul, and I decided I didn't want anything to do with people like that!  What a hateful person!"

I've known too many people whose stories go like that.  I've heard too many times from people who said they walked out on church, not because they didn't care for Jesus, but because too many folks who said they followed Jesus spoke, acted, lived in ways that seemed flagrantly un-Christ-like.  A whole generation of young voices has come of age saying things like, "My church growing up told me to be like Jesus, and even got us all 'What Would Jesus Do?' bracelets to make sure we would--and then those same voices sold out to greed, selfishness, rudeness, and cruelty, all in the name of getting themselves a golden age and a new empire. Why would I want to be a part of something like that?" And they're not wrong. They have seen in so many Respectable Religious Folks only obstacles that make them less interested in Jesus, and very little that showed them the way of Jesus was real.  Of course they don't want to sit in pews and contribute offerings to a Christ-less Christianity like that.

Quite often, when church folks (and religious "professionals" like me!) hear those kinds of criticisms from others, we get defensive.  We want to blame those who have left church, or accuse them of "rejecting the Truth," or cast aspersions on the busyness of schedules with soccer practices and hockey games on Sunday mornings.  But maybe the problem isn't merely with "those people" who have walked out of church and not come back.  Maybe the question Paul would have us ask is, "What obstacles have we been setting up in other people's way that makes them no longer willing to even try to get to Jesus?"  Maybe we need to ask if we have been setting up roadblocks to turn folks away when God's intention has been to reach across those boundaries and barriers in love to draw everybody?  And maybe we need to ask on a daily basis, "What are the places in my life where I'm acting or speaking in ways that run counter to Jesus--and what am I willing to do about it?"

At the end of my life, I don't want there to have been people who said, "I would have been more interested in Jesus, but STEVE turned me away from him because he just made Jesus' love seem like a fraud."  I don't want to have been the obstacle that stood in the way of anybody being pulled in by grace, even if eventually God's grace found other ways to get through to them.  

This Lent, as we consider what it means to love beyond boundaries, it's worth asking ourselves on a regular basis whether we are removing barriers or adding them when it comes to letting people be brought into the presence of the God who loves them.

What will we do with this day?

Lord Jesus, if you have to, work in spite of us.  But we would prefer you work through us, removing obstacles and roadblocks we have set up, so that our lives can be conduits for your love rather than barriers to it.

Outside the Containers--March 6, 2025

Outside the Containers--March 6, 2025

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58:1-7)

If there is one thing the prophets are crystal clear on, it is that we cannot separate our love of God from our love of neighbors. 

No matter how much we might wish to keep a hard and fast line between them, prophets like Isaiah do not offer that option.  That is, you might say, one of the ways that love goes beyond boundaries--our love for God cannot help but spill over into the ways we treat other human beings.  And there is no possibility of telling God we don't want to have to love our neighbors and are willing to do extra shifts of loving God to make up the difference.  No, the Scriptures insist that love is ultimately of one piece--the degree to which I love God is inseparable from the degree to which I love other people.

That probably comes through pretty clearly here in this passage from what we know as the 58th chapter of Isaiah, words that many of us heard quite recently on Ash Wednesday.  The situation is this: the people are complaining to God that God doesn't seem to be taking note of all their religious rituals and displays of public piety.  "Why are we fasting, but you're not paying attention, God?"  "Why are we going through the motions of humbling ourselves, but you don't seem impressed?" The people think that God is like a celestial vending machine, and if they do a little ritual or mumble the right words, then God is obligated to shower them with favor and do their bidding.  And on this point, the prophet speaks for God and calls them out on their bad theology and even worse devotion.

In the prophet's telling it, God answers back to the people, "How about you correct the injustices that you've been comfortably ignoring instead--how about that can be your 'fasting'?"  God says, "Isn't the kind of 'fasting' I really want that you set people free who are oppressed, that you welcome people to your table who are hungry, and to open your doors to the ones without homes?"  The assumed answer, of course, is that this is what God really wants.  God tells the people, in other words, that they cannot separate their relationship with God from their relationships with other people.  They might have wished that they could keep these two in hermetically sealed compartments in their lives--one for God, and one for other people--so that they don't have to deal with caring for others.  But God won't let them off the hook that way.  God insists that the way to show love for God is to show love for other people, because love, like watercolor paint bleeding across the fibers of the paper, won't stay within the lines we have drawn.  And as Isaiah 58 tells it, there is no option for loving God that stays confined to the ritualized practice of prayers while we turn away from those who are hungry, seeking refuge, or suffering from injustice. Love for God--if it is the real deal--cannot stay put within the confines of a Sunday morning service, an Ash Wednesday liturgy, a daily devotional time, or a fish bumper sticker on your car.  Genuine love goes beyond the boundaries of organized religion or public displays of piety to show up as actions of care and habits of empathy for other people, precisely because they are beloved of God.

The old line of Martin Luther's goes something like this: "God doesn't need your good works, but your neighbor does."  Luther is saying the same thing as the prophet did twenty centuries before he was born: if you want to show love for God, you do it by caring for the people whom God loves (which is everybody, in particular those who are suffering) because there is nothing you can do for God directly that God needs.   God isn't powered by our prayers, and God's ego does not need stroking from our hymns of praise.  God doesn't require our offerings, and God will not be impressed by our ability to go without food or chocolate or what-have-you for any length of God.  God is not an audience needing to be entertained or wowed by our feats of religious fervor, and God is not some sort of deal-maker looking to trade prayers for divine favor in return.  But God does care about other human beings, and so if you want to show God the depth of your love, the way to do it is to love your neighbors (which includes strangers and enemies, according to Jesus).  In other words, the way to love God is to allow that love to move outside the containers we would have tried to hold it inside of, and to spill outward to include people in whatever their situations or needs are.

Today, maybe that's the question to reflect on for us:  what are the places in our lives we've been trying to silo off our religious selves from the rest of our lives, and what might it look like to let our love for God flow outward across those lines and boundaries to include other people?  What might it look like for us today to love God by loving other people?  And what empty motions that we had been going through for the sake of appearances might we be able to leave by the wayside in order to go where Jesus leads us?

Since God has already told us what would express our love best, the only question is whether we will dare to do what God has asked for: to care for those who suffer as our way of showing our love for God.  What do you think--do we dare?

Lord God, pull us out of empty performances of piety that you never needed in the first place to love the people you have placed in our lives as our way of loving you deeply and fully.

The Final Frontier--March 5, 2025

The Final Frontier--March 5, 2025

"For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

At the beating heart of the Christian faith is this scandalous claim: in Christ, the holy God fully absorbed our unholiness into God's own being.  In Jesus, the One who is perfectly just and righteous took on all of our injustice and unrighteousness.  Or as these words we hear each year on Ash Wednesday put it, "for our sake, God made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin."  

Yeah, you might need to read that again to make sure you got it right: Jesus, the Sinless One, "became sin" for us. That sounds impossible, doesn't it?  Like matter colliding with antimatter, or a positive proton suddenly taking on the negative charge of an electron, or the North Pole suddenly pointing south.  If "sin" is to some degree "whatever is opposed to God," then it sure sounds like in Christ, God took on all that was and is and ever will be anti-God, and swallowed it up in Jesus and nailed it to the cross.  It sounds like the Source of All Holiness crossing into the territory of all that is unholy, for the sake of bringing us to God.

And yeah, that's essentially what the Apostle Paul is saying here: in Jesus, God has crossed the ultimate barrier, or to borrow the line from Star Trek, "the final frontier."  At the cross, the love of God traversed the boundary we thought was uncrossable--God didn't even let all of humanity's sin, injustice, cruelty, and meanness stop God from meeting us in that mess, absorbing it all into Jesus, and neutralizing its power over us.  Like drawing poison out of a wound, Christ takes into himself the venom that has been killing us all, even at the cost of becoming toxic himself.  This is the love that embraces us from the center of the Gospel: that there is no length God will not go to, no depth God will not descend to, no line God will not cross, in order to bring us back to God.

Theologians, saints, mystics, and poets have all found themselves awestruck at this realization, because no matter how you describe it or what analogy you use to understand it, the Gospel's claim sounds impossibly good.  The One who is the Resurrection and the Life crosses into the Valley of the Shadow of Death to bring us through.  The Source of All Holiness takes on the whole of our unholiness into himself in Jesus.  The God who is perfectly just and righteous absorbs our guilt and wickedness.  It's like our human language itself falls apart in the face of this kind of love.  Maybe that's how you know you've got the genuine gospel and not some cheap, moralistic knock-off:  if it doesn't sound scandalous, it's not the real deal.

This is where we need to begin our Lenten journey this year, especially as our focus in our "Life on the Edge" for this Lent leads us to consider "Love Beyond Boundaries."  Because before we get to any talk about giving up chocolate, or being extra nice to people, or recommitting our lives to Jesus, or renewing our discipleship, these forty days are meant to point us first to the impossible and infinite love of God in Christ.  This season often gets a bad rap for being just a religious version of Sober January--a time for cutting out the "fun" things and being miserable for forty days, as though self-deprivation impressed God.  (It does not.)  But really, these forty days are meant to give us the time and space to be recentered in the love of God, since these days turn our focus to the cross, which is the center point of God's boundary-crossing, self-giving, sin-absorbing love.  So in these days, we'll be looking especially at how God's love crosses boundaries, transcends limits, and exceeds the capacities of human language and thought.  That's what the Christina good news is all about anyway!

So if you have been stuck in the mentality that somehow God's holiness meant that God is squeamish about going near sinners, or that a perfect and righteous deity cannot stand to be in the presence of stinkers like us, here's the actual good news from the actual Scriptures: in Christ, the Sinless One took on all our sin and absorbed it into himself once and for all, like a soldier leaping onto a live grenade in order to absorb the blast with his own body in order to save his comrades.  God's holiness doesn't mean that God is allergic to our sin like Superman being weakened by Kryptonite; it means that God was willing to shield us from its deathly effects by bearing it all in Christ. God has swallowed all the iocane powder so we won't drink the poison.  God in Christ has become the last horcrux to defeat the Dark Lord with his own wicked wand.  God in Christ has crossed over into Mordor carrying the One Ring, bearing its malevolence like a weight around the neck for the sake of saving all of Middle Earth. Or again, maybe the way Paul says it is exactly the way it needs to be said: "For our sake, God made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God."

There is no boundary God hasn't crossed already to bring us back to God.  This is how we are loved.  This is what happens at the cross.  That's why we are beginning this journey called Lent once again--to be re-centered in the love that goes beyond every boundary for us.

Lord God, let us be recentered in your love, in all of its impossible infinitude.

Learning to Listen--March 4, 2025

Learning to Listen--March 4, 2025

"Just as [Moses and Elijah] were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, 'Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah'--not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, 'This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!' When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen." (Luke 9:33-36)

Silence is uncomfortable. I suspect all of us at one time or another feel awkward when things get quiet.

I think at least part of the reason that we aren't comfortable with being silent is that it forces us out of the position of having the answers and knowing what is going on, or at least telling ourselves that we know what is going on.  "We chirp theories like chickadees," wrote the late Walter Wangerin, Jr., "because ignorance is terrifying and we need the noise." He was right.

But when life compels us to be silent--or when someone or something interrupts us while we are talking and forces us to be quiet--we are pushed out of our comfort zones at least in part because it reveals we are not in control of everything.  Being silent often goes hand in hand with listening to others, and letting others speak can make us skittish because we are brought into their perspective and their understanding, which may not be the same as our own.  How much more so when it is God who silences us and compels us to listen to a different perspective, forcing us to admit both to our Creator and ourselves that we didn't know what we were talking about.  That's hard, because it's both humbling and disorienting.  And yet, it is quite often an avoidable part of discipleship, because we will regularly find Jesus showing us--lovingly, but without pulling punches--that it is time for us to stop speaking so that we can listen to what he would tell us.

That literally happens here in this climactic moment from the story that many of us heard this past Sunday of the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop.  As Jesus' appearance changes (revealing who he really is and has been all along) and the great prophetic figures of Moses and Elijah appear, alongside of him, Jesus' inner circle of disciples are dumbfounded.  And when the moment appears to be ending and these two biblical celebrities seem to be ready to depart (maybe they are putting their coats on or reaching for their keys?), Simon Peter blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind.  "Hold up a minute, Lord!  It's perfect that I'm here, because I can help build a little shelter or hut for each of you three, and we can all stay up here on the mountain forever!"  

There's nothing sinful or wicked about Simon Peter's impulsive offer.  But, as Luke the narrator points out, ol' Pete didn't know what he was saying.  He was doing his darnedest to get a grip on the moment and make sense of what was happening, and some part of his definitely wanted to hold onto Moses and Elijah for as long as possible.  But he didn't know what to say, so he just said... anything.  And in response, Luke tells us, the literal voice of God from an enveloping cloud interrupts Simon Peter and silences him.  God speaks, making it clear to Simon Peter that this is a time for him to listen, not to speak--and that this is a moment for him to give up the illusion of being in control, rather than trying to call the shots.  It was, Luke tells us, terrifying--and yet it was necessary.  God wasn't trying to scare Simon Peter or James and John, but rather to remind them that this was not a moment they could master or dissect or diagram.  This wasn't a time for them to speak up, but rather to step back and allow God to speak.  You can't become an expert in Mystery; you can only be still enough to listen when Mystery speaks.

Like I say, though, that's uncomfortable for all of us, whether you are a first-century disciple or a twenty-first century one.  We want to believe that we have the 'right' answers, if only everyone else will listen to us (God included!), and instead, God often puts a finger to the divine lips and tells us to hush--so that we can listen without the illusion of thinking we know it all.  We do not.

I'm reminded of a prayer written by the Catholic mystic of the last century, Thomas Merton, who said it this way: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing...."  That's a hard prayer to pray honestly, because it is very difficult for any of us to face the truth which Merton names: that just because we think we are following God's will doesn't mean that we actually are.  Wow. That's hard.

That's how things go for this inner circle of disciples, though, for sure, isn't it?  Certainly there up on the mountain, Peter thinks he is completely in line with God's will proposing to set up a little motel for Jesus, Moses, Elijah and himself--only to be silenced.  But it will happen again when James and John ask Jesus later on if they can have the spots at his left and right hand in glory, only to have Jesus remind them that he doesn't deal in favoritism, prestige, or nepotism like that.  And they'll ask him later on if they should call down fire from heaven when there is a village of Samaritans who haven't welcomed Jesus, and he'll tell them once again to close their mouths and listen to him instead.  And ultimately in the garden on the night of Jesus' betrayal, Simon Peter will think he is doing God's will getting out his sword to slash at the lynch-mob and religious police who have come to arrest Jesus, only to have Jesus himself silence Peter and then heal the man who Peter had struck with his sword.  Over and over again, even Jesus' closest friends and innermost circle of disciples have to have God bring them to silence and remind them that they do not have all the answers they think they possess. How can we possibly imagine that we will do any better at getting it right?

Maybe the challenge for this day, then, is to learn to listen, which will also mean learning to be quiet enough to let God speak--including listening to the other people through whom God might be trying to get through to us. Maybe before we go off making pronouncements about how God must be at work in the world, or whose side God is on, or which exclusive mountaintops God wants us to build little clubs for the religiously elite on top of, perhaps we should let God stop our mouths from moving long enough for us to listen.  Perhaps we need to admit how few solid answers we really have and instead keep turning to the living God, who will surprise us every time.

A lot of folks in the watching world have heard us Respectable Religious Folks spouting off all of our certainties about God, the world, and who gets to stay in the prime spots next to Jesus.  And I think they have heard enough to know that we don't have nearly as many right answers as we often think we do.  I suspect, too, that an awful lot of the folks around us have decided they don't want to hear what we have to say because we have never been willing to listen to anybody else, either.  What difference might it make in our witness to the world around if we were willing to be silent sometimes, and to listen to the voices around us, for the mere possibility that God might be trying to get through to us through them?  What might change if we committed to some quiet contemplation and active listening when we find ourselves in a new situation or in the face of Mystery, rather than rushing to explain or issue declarations?  What if we were willing to admit we weren't in control and instead let the living Christ teach us in those moments?

As much as that might make us uncomfortable, it might just bring us into the very presence of God.

O God, close our mouths and open our ears.  Speak, and make us to listen.

The Looming Shadow--March 3, 2025

 The Looming Shadow--March 3, 2025

"Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." (Luke 9:28-31)

The paintings and the stained-glass window representations of this story never include it, but there's a looming shadow of the cross in this story.  To be honest, you can never go very long in the gospels without Jesus being very clear about where he is headed and how he faces a Roman cross with courage and love, even though he knows what awaits him.  It colors every moment of Jesus' life and ministry, even the most seemingly otherworldly and glorious ones. If we had any hopes that this transcendent scene where Jesus' visibly transforms in front of his disciples and is visited by two of the most revered figures of the Hebrew Scriptures would offer some easy escapism for us, Jesus, Moses and Elijah dash those hopes right before our eyes.

You can see the shadow of the cross in that curious detail that Luke includes here in this passage, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  The great lawgiver Moses, along with the quintessential prophet Elijah, have struck up a conversation with Jesus about "his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem."  That's Luke the narrator trying to be tasteful, but the phrase "his departure" isn't about a day-trip or a journey.  The looming "departure" Jesus will make "at Jerusalem" is the cross--that is to say, it is death.  And in fact, even the word "departure" here is a translation of the Greek word "exodus," as in the same word used for the great deliverance God accomplished for the enslaved Israelites from Pharaoh's Egypt through the Sea and on the way to the Promised Land.  Jesus is about to accomplish a new exodus--a new event of deliverance, redemption, and rescue--but it will also come at a price.  Jesus will set a world full of us, entangled and held captive in sin as we are, free from the grip of death; but he will do so by laying down his own life.  Jesus will liberate humanity like a whole new Parting of the Sea, but he will accomplish it by being crucified.  See? You just can't go very far at all in the story of Jesus without running into the unavoidable cross.

And, just to be honest about this, the cross of Jesus is always something that pulls us out of our comfort zones.  We don't want to admit that our own complicity in sin and captivity to death are big enough deals to require a crucified messiah.  And we don't want to acknowledge that since Jesus calls us to follow him, we too are being called to the way of the cross.  There is always within us some impulse looking to have some version of Christianity without that cost, to have faith without following Jesus to the cross, or to turn religion into a means of feeling spiritually warm and fuzzy, rather than letting Jesus lead us to share the sufferings of others, to bear pain with others, and to head into the messy places.  And there is always something in us that wants a Messiah who looks more like a "winner," who sides with the strong and the powerful, who vanquishes his enemies, and who offers us comfort and convenience, rather than the Savior we actually get, who lays down his life on a cross in utter self-emptying in what looks like an utter defeat at the hands of the powers of the day.  Even on the Mount of Transfiguration, which might have otherwise seemed to be removed from the slings and arrows of this mortal coil, Jesus has his eyes on the way of the cross.

In our own lives of faith, the cross is never far from the moments we are closest to Jesus.  We might have those times when we feel God's presence especially powerfully, or where it feels like we are on the mountaintop along with Simon Peter, James, and John.  When they happen, great!  Let them give you clarity, guidance, and assurance.  But also, we should be prepared for God to use those mountaintop moments to direct us to places or people where we will be called to share the suffering of people around us, to bear the cross for others, or to face down the powers of the day.  Jesus hasn't come merely to dole out vaguely spiritual feelings or help us achieve the American Dream--he calls us always on the journey to the cross, in which we empty ourselves for the sake of others, serve as our alternative kind of greatness, and share in the pain of others.

Today, then, I pray that you will be granted one of those moments where God's presence is real to you, where God's guidance is made clear to you, and where you are given what you most deeply need.  And I pray, too, that when it comes and also leads you on the way of the cross with Jesus, you will be given the grace and strength to follow in Jesus' footsteps there, even when that means going beyond our comfort zones.

Here we go.

Lord Jesus, show us yourself in your glorious reality, and let that direct us to walk with you on the way to the cross.