So what do we do now? Do we keep on screwing people over since there's an unlimited amount of grace available to us? Hell no! How can we - in the same breath - enjoy our freedom and entrap ourselves to things that kill our hearts? Jesus wanted to show the world that it was and is possible for our dead end lives to have meaning once again - that in a way, our wreckage has been crucified and immersed in death. There's no such thing as a dead end anymore! We've all been given a do-over, a fresh start, and a chance to walk in the light of hope that this God provides. We are united through this new school of thinking and acting, both through the death of our old sin-obsessed lives and the revival of our new hope-filled journeys. We are free now, no longer being trafficked around by the carnage of shame and guilt. And since we share the common hope which Christ put on display (the possibility and reality of our dead-end lives being done away with), we share the same spirit of the movement that Jesus so radically started. That movement my friends is only growing. It's not going away anytime soon. Even death isn't strong enough to overcome this movement. And the springboard for this growing movement is this: Jesus wanted us to see and believe that this God does not look at us through the filter of what we've done wrong. Instead, this God looks at us through the lens of relationship and harmony and communion. In other words, we're dead to that old way of trying to fix ourselves and banging our heads against the wall, but we're alive to this God who's in the business of freeing and restoring our hearts, minds, and all of creation. As a result, we don't have to listen to the voices inside our heads that tell us to do things that in our deepest being we know aren't right. We no longer have to use our hands, feet, and tongues to bring chaos to our own lives and the lives of others. But now, we can use every part of our being to thrive in this communion with God, and to take part in this ongoing journey of restoration in the world around us. We're no longer bound by a set of rules and guidelines, but bound to the grace of this God.
I can still hear some of you turning this thing over in your mind, "Since we're no longer bound to that shitty system of laws, we should be able to just do anything we want." Yes and no. If you wanna be a slave to shit, you'll be a slave to shit. But, if you wanna be free, you'll put yourself in positions to act as free beings. Thank God all of us have the code of freedom written on our hearts! And if we listen carefully, we'll know which direction we need to go to experience more and more freedom as each day goes by. We're slaves to freedom now, and we're not interested in strapping chains to our feet anymore! And I know more than anybody how hard it is sometimes to stay away from chaos, but we have the opportunity to turn all those liabilities that we once carried around, into assets that will be used for good. Chaos looks so good sometimes that we unthinkingly jump right into it, but it doesn't take long for the remorse to set in, and then the shame. Our hearts die and our minds follow closely behind, so hold onto the reality that we've been rescued from that vicious cycle and we are servants to this God who's continuously dispensing grace. This is what they mean when they say eternal life: when we wake up to the reality of the freedom that is engulfing us, time ceases to matter. We live in the moment - not the past and not the future - but here and now because we can't get enough of it!
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