What if eternal life doesn’t begin at the destination, but in the ditch?
What if the most important part of the journey isn’t where you're going—but what interrupts you along the way?

Deuteronomy 30:9–14 | Colossians 1:1–14 | Luke 10:25–37

Jesus sends 72 (or 70) workers out to proclaim the peace of the reign of God and its imminent approach. The number is a symbol – Genesis says that there are 72 (or 70) nations in the world. Jesus is sending messengers to the four corners of the earth. There are only a few workers for such an enormous harvest. Times have not changed. As churches close, seminary classes dwindle and volunteers disappear we might wonder our fate as the church. This text is Jesus’ reply.

We humans are good at applying labels to each other. Short, fat, black, white, loser, winner… We drop bombs on “enemies,” we feed (or chastise) the “hungry. We apply a label and we think we know a person. When Jesus encounters a gentile, demon-possessed, man who is as good as dead (he lives in the cemetery), Jesus sees none of the labels. Instead, he restores the man to his standing as a human, a child of God. Christ sees you for who you are, not for the labels you bear. And he sets us free.

Jesus once said, “You cannot bear it now.” We usually think of the unbearable as pain—and rightly so. But what if the unbearable isn’t only sorrow? What if it’s also joy too overwhelming to carry, love too deep to explain, grace too beautiful to hold?

Pentecost is a festival that celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit. For years, English-speaking Christians referred to the third person of the Trinity as “The Holy Ghost” (some still do). This always made me think of Casper when I was a kid. The Holy Spirit is not, however, an apparition, a paranormal anomaly. The Holy Spirit is the very being of God that is given to all who call on the name of the Lord. It is the indwelling image of God poured into us by grace. It stands against the spirits of the age that tempt us to greed, violence, despair, selfishness, and division. The Holy Spirit is God making us the holy people of God.

We live in the tension between ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ and ‘Come and see’ - crying out for Christ’s return while extending Christ’s invitation to a thirsty world. The church is called to be both bride calling out to Christ and wellspring offering living water to all who thirst. What does it mean to live faithfully in the in-between time, when the promise of ‘soon’ stretches across centuries and the prayer for unity meets our human divisions?

Acts 16:16-34 | Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 | John 17:20-26

Scripture does not tell us much about Lydia, but we have enough to know that she begins the story as one who is always the outsider. A woman in a man’s world, a person of wealth and means, an immigrant, a gentile among Jews. Then she hears the gospel and is baptized, and all these identities are replaced. She becomes a child of God, “marked by the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit.” She becomes the leader of the church at Philippi. How does this transformation happen? How does it happen for us?