Yesterday I reflected on the resurrection and on life beyond this life. I have to acknowledge there is a legitimate critique of Christianity in this regard — that we sometimes reduce our faith to simply getting into heaven when we die, as if it were a magic ticket to somewhere else.

But the gospel was never just about our souls escaping to another world while this one suffers. I've heard this distortion called "evacuation theology." You may have seen the bumper sticker: "In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned!" The unspoken message underneath it is troubling: my religion could kill you, and I won't be around to help.

For the first Christians, the resurrection meant something different — hope for this world. The good news carried with it an invitation to an entirely new way of life. We read about how they lived with a transformed outlook, sharing their possessions, caring for the poor, welcoming the stranger. For them, Easter was the radical claim that darkness, disappointment, suffering, injustice, and even death would not have the last word. And so they began to live exactly as though that were true.

Yesterday I shared reflections from my friend Herb Meza. I've thought often about how he embraced life — fearlessly, especially when it came to standing up for civil rights in the South, at a time when doing so was genuinely dangerous. I believe he was able to live that way, at least in part, because he knew he was part of something much larger than himself. His life had significance beyond what could be seen. He lived with resurrection hope — not just facing his own death, but in the way he lived every ordinary day.

I saw the same thing in Patricia Robertson, a member of my last church who died a few years back. She was extraordinarily generous — serving in food pantries and soup kitchens, spending years helping refugees resettle in the Atlanta area. Near the end, she told me she was ready to go. She wasn't afraid. She firmly believed death would not have the last word.

I don't think those two things were unrelated. She knew she was part of something bigger. She had a resurrection hope.

I don't know exactly what heaven is like. I don't know whether there's surfing, or whether I'll get an audience with Jesus to ask my most pressing theological questions. I don't know if any of that will even matter to me when I get there. But I do trust this: the love I have given, and the love I have received — the love I have known here on earth — I will know there as well. And I trust that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is still at work in you, in the church, and in the world.

Prayer: Eternal God, grant us this day an Easter faith. We trust that you are the God who brings light out of darkness, hope out of despair, and even life out of death. Amen.

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I've been reflecting on the cross a lot lately. On the other side of it is the resurrection.

It is, if you think about it, a remarkably bold claim — one that will most likely never be proven, and that resists easy explanation. At its heart it is a mystery, dealing in love and in what lies beyond. It is the faith claim that there is more to this world than we can see or know — recognizing, of course, that to say the opposite, that there is nothing beyond, is also a faith claim.

Many years ago, my friend Herb Meza preached a beautiful Easter sermon. In it he reflected on how life is full of hints that point to something more beyond us. He wrote about how science has discovered colors beyond what the eye can see, octaves above and below what the ear can hear, and findings from physics that stretch the imagination of even the greatest scientists. He spoke too about his own mother — how on the very day he was wounded in battle during World War II, she fell into a deep depression, though she had no way of knowing what had happened to her son.

He wrote: "Everywhere we turn there are hints that there is more — hints of life and power and energy. But even if there were no hints, there is that instinct within humans that points to more. Pascal once said that God had planted this instinct in our very souls, and no matter how much we try to disbelieve it, it keeps creeping up and out when we come face to face with the mystery of death."

The resurrection is the triumphant affirmation of something we have never proven but instinctively know — that our small world of time and space is but a fragment of something far larger than we can perceive with our eyes, hear with our ears, or touch with our senses.

Herb ended his sermon this way: "I believe that one day every bruise, every cancer cell, every blind eye, every limp and every lump will be set right. One day every embarrassment and every rejection and every hurt we have suffered will give way to glory. I do not know how God will deal with all the shabbiness, the failures, the betrayal. It surely must hurt God. But I know God is loving and forgiving. One day, every moment of hoping against hope will be rewarded."

Prayer: We thank you, Loving God, for your promise to hold us even into eternity. Help us to believe even when we have not yet seen. We claim the promise today that in life and in death, we belong to you. Amen.

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Psalm 139 is one of my favorites. I love it because when we pray it, we are reminded that we are the work of God's hands. The imagery is striking — the Psalmist writes, "You knit me together in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13) I can almost picture God weaving each strand together, deliberately, with care.

The Psalm continues: "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14)

Right out of college, I taught high school. It used to break my heart to hear students put each other down over their weight, their height, their looks. Teenagers can be brutal with one another. But what broke my heart even more was knowing that when people tear others down, it is usually because they don't feel particularly good about themselves either.

We live in a culture where so many people — young and old alike — struggle with how they see themselves. Social media has only made this harder, with its endless, curated comparisons — filtered photos, highlight reels, the constant temptation to measure our own ordinary lives against someone else's carefully edited one. 

I wonder how often we pass along the truth of this Psalm to the children and grandchildren in our lives, growing up inside all of that. Do they know they are fearfully and wonderfully made? For that matter, do you know it, about yourself?

Some time ago, our choir sang an anthem based on this Psalm. The words have stayed with me:

In the beginning, God shaped and formed me. I am skillfully and wonderfully made. I am the image of my Creator. In every part of me, his likeness is displayed. For his own purpose, God shaped and formed me. I have a place within his plan. I am in the image of my Creator. My past and future are secure within his hand.

That is true of you, exactly as you are — not the version of yourself you wish you could be, not the body or face or story you sometimes compare unfavorably to someone else's. You. Knit together with intention. Fearfully and wonderfully made.

Prayer: Creator God, we remember today that we are the work of your hands — a work of art. Give us eyes to see the beauty within ourselves, and within every person we meet. Amen.

There's an old Dennis the Menace comic strip where Dennis's friend Margaret is scolding him while he's talking to another friend. "Shame on you," she says. "Don't you know God hears everything you say in this room?" In the next frame, Dennis turns to his buddy and says, "Let's go into the kitchen."

Most of us would say, if asked, that we believe God is everywhere. But we live as though that isn't quite true. We compartmentalize — sacred and secular, body and soul, spiritual and physical, Sunday and the rest of the week. There is the part of life we bring before God, and the part we quietly keep for ourselves.

Scripture doesn't actually recognize that division. There is no biblical category for "secular." There is only sacred and profaned — things treated as holy, and things treated as ordinary or worse.

That means all of life is, in some sense, spiritual territory. Our money. Our bodies. Our work. Our relationships. Our meals, our music, our rest. Every one of these is a gift entrusted to us by God — not separated off into some lesser category called "everyday life," but woven into the same fabric as our prayers and our worship.

Paul wrote, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31) Not just the obviously spiritual things. Everything.

We get to choose, in each of those ordinary moments, whether we will receive them as gifts — cherishing them, using them well, enjoying them as they were intended — or whether we will abuse and diminish them, treating them as though they don't matter to God at all.

There is no kitchen we can retreat to where God isn't already present.

Your life — all of it, the parts you think of as sacred and the parts you've never thought to call holy — is sacred. God has entrusted you with these gifts. May you receive them as such, today, in whatever ordinary thing you find yourself doing.

Prayer: Generous God, when our eyes and hearts are open, we stand in awe of your beauty and goodness. You have blessed us so richly. Help us treasure your gifts and use them in ways that do not diminish them, or us. Rest your Spirit on us this day, in every corner of our lives. We ask in Christ's name. Amen.

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I was reading about Fred Rogers recently and came across one of his favorite quotes, from the poet Kenneth Koch: "You aren't only the age you are — you are all the ages you've ever been."

I love that thought. Somewhere inside the person you are today is the seven-year-old you were, and the twenty-five-year-old, and every version in between — the mistakes, the wonder, the heartbreak, the joy. All of it is still part of you. None of it has simply disappeared.

That can be a comforting thought, or a difficult one, depending on what those ages hold.

Some of us carry regret about a particular chapter — a decision we wish we could undo, a season that feels wasted, a version of ourselves we'd rather forget. And it is tempting to believe that those years simply don't count. That they were a detour, a mistake, time we'll never get back.

But God wastes nothing. Every age we have ever been — even the painful ones, even the ones we're ashamed of — God can take and use to shape us into people capable of real compassion for others.

I think of the people I've known whose most meaningful ministry grew directly out of their hardest seasons — the one in recovery who now walks alongside others getting sober, the one who lost a child and now sits with grieving parents, the one who failed publicly and now offers grace to others doing the same. Their pain didn't disappear. It became something deeper - something usable.

Paul wrote, "We know that all things work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28) This is not a claim that everything that happens is good — but a promise that nothing is wasted in God's hands.

Prayer: Loving and gracious God, sometimes we let our past haunt us, even own us. We know you want better for us — that you created us to be free from guilt, regret, bitterness, and grudges. Help us to let go of what needs releasing, to learn what we need to learn, and then to move forward. We trust that you have been with us through every age we have been, even the ones when you seemed far away. You are the God of new beginnings. Mold us and shape us into instruments of your mercy and grace. In Jesus' name. Amen.

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