August 9God is already present in our future. When we get there, Revelation reveals that the Lamb will be worshipped by every tribe, language, people and nation. The cross is the central point of the entire universe and through it, we are made to be a kingdom and priests serving our God.
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August 16Many definitions exist for the word love, including the love of family, the love of a relationship, and the love of sacrifice. We discover the highest definition of love in the truest sacrifice: we know love through the cross. In fact, we cannot understand love without it.
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August 23While the world pursues the illusion of a pain free life, as Christ followers we are honest in knowing that suffering is the way of the world. The story of the cross is a story of suffering, and to be a follower of Jesus is to participate in his sufferings and, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
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Even in the scriptural passages that don’t talk directly about the cross, it is baked in. At the cross we confront our own sins and brokenness and receive the gift of repentance and new life. When we become “doers of the word," as James calls us to, we begin to enact the cross in our own time and space.
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As broken humans, we are always searching for ways to be “made right,” with God and others. Through the cross and resurrection, God chooses to offer us forgiveness that we might be made right not only with God, but in our community.
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The people greeting Jesus with palm leaves had faith he was the Messiah. Faith is what Jesus tried to teach the disciples who fell asleep in the garden. Faith gave the women the strength to stay beside Jesus through it all. Faith in God’s community, in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, and in God’s new creation will carry us through these trying times.
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