Do you ever feel the heaviness of how broken the world is? Have you ever felt stuck under that burden and weight? It begs the question, How did Jesus work for transformation within the heaviness of all the suffering, pain, and injustice yet not be overcome by the weight of it all? In Matthew, Jesus not only gives us insight into this lightness, He invites us into it. We can work WITHIN the heaviness yet FROM and IN and WITH a lightness. I can feel the weight being lifted already.
Paul makes one basic observation about how he understands the natural order of the universe: we reap what we sow. For some, this is understood as a threat. For Paul, it was understood as a hope. For all those who have grown weary, fatigued, depleted, and burnt-out working for beauty, truth, and goodness, do not give up! The process of cultivating a new earth is arduous at times, but it is not in vain. If we continue to sow love, joy, and peace, we will inevitably reap a world where universal flourishing is a reality.
The U.S. has averaged over eleven mass shootings per week in 2022. At least 344 people have been killed and almost 1,400 wounded. Is this the kind of world we want to live in? What if I told you we get to create the world we want to live in? Last week we looked at imagination. This week we move to integration. The prophet Micah uses the image of beating swords into plowshares to evoke the process of transformation. Instruments of death are transformed into instruments of life. Today we talk about guns + hearts.
What kind of a world do we want to live in? This is the crucial question of our time. Our world is not fixed, static, or finished. To the contrary, it is evolving, unfolding, and malleable. The point? We get to create the world we want to live in. In this series, I want to evoke a collective consciousness that transcends our status quo. I want us to propose a future that seems unthinkable to the dominant reality. My hope is that together we can nurture imagination and inspire integration for a new earth. My passion is that we get caught up in a vision of what could be.