Come with me, it’s not far.  Just a place up on the hill where we can chat beyond the noise of the city.  While we walk tell me about your heart.  Does your pulse race each day trying to keep up with the requirements of this world?  Or do you find that you have all the time you need, peaceful time to sit, read, and discuss with friends and family the things that are important?  How is your mentor?  Is she or he pleased with the steps you have taken to mature and present yourself an asset to your family, community, church or nation?  Do you have quality time with God, so that He can answer those questions that fill all our minds and upset all of our hearts?

You see the story of Jesus is not about control, ownership, strictness or remorse.  It is about the God who made us.  It is an opportunity to know from where we’ve come and to where we are headed.  A story of love so grand that Our Father knowing that we were in trouble beyond our own fixing provided us the means to find our way back into relationship with Him.  This tale is one that raises all the possibilities of imagination while providing all the real solutions for each day, each trial, every trespass and betrayal that we face.  It is about a LOVE so grand that even a man a wretched as I had become was not beyond forgiveness, grace, mercy and change.  Change that wiped clean the slate of my iniquities as if I had never been scarred, dirtied, sullied or septic.  A Love that waited there for me to reach that breaking point where I had enough of my own foolishness and pride.  A God named to us Jesus who came to us to remind us that He had been listening, watching, praying and waiting for us to reach out in belief.  Giving us the free will to fall or to ask forgiveness and be “re”-created in His image, for His purpose and truth.  Jesus a door left open to the rich and poor alike.  A Mercy Seat upon which Sits the King of Kings ready to forgive and accept us into our true citizenship in the Kingdom of Grace and Glory.

This world has been fun, but its laws of nature are caught in the process of evolutionary entropy.  Those who wager all that they have on the ability of man to overcome the global problems to which we find ourselves wed will grasp to that philosophy until the moment Christ comes to set things right.  Evolution will not provide the enlightenment, the scientific resolution, the golden dream or the prayer directed to trees, stars, mars or eight headed idol.  There is Peace found in Jesus.  There is strength in the Hands of the Holy Lord, not the kind of strength that preaches domination, but the strength to forgive, to let go of past catastrophe.  It is against human nature to surrender and that is where a relationship with the Lord begins, where man’s ability to overcome fails.  But there is comfort, joy and peace in surrender to the Lord for He is Love.  He made each of us and knows the answers to our most difficult dilemma.  Those who are caught up in this world view this surrender as weakness, but those who have tasted of the well of the Living Water know how sweet and satisfying this relationship becomes.  Cast your cares upon Jesus, drop your burden at the foot of the Cross, forgive yourself and others who have wronged you.  Depend upon the ROCK for He will not be moved and His Word shall never dissolve, though this world be destroyed or remade a thousand times.  Let’s just sit here for a while and have a silent conversation with Him.

You Lord, are beyond my understanding, but I will still seek to know all that there is know about you.  Forgive me the things I have done to displease You and let me extend that same grace to all that I meet.  Never leave me Lord, especially in those moments when I have been deceived into believing that I can handle it on my own, for we both know the disaster that thinking produces.  Guide me to all that is Good in this life as I am being prepared to serve Your Glory in the next.  Let me extend real Love to those in need and forgiveness to those, like me, who do not deserve it but drastically need it none-the-less.  Let us make the best use of this quiet time with You and allow us to carry that Peace back to those we encounter this day and the next.  Thank you Father.  Amen