We just keep showing up together in the present with the lives we actually have. And maybe find that the risen Christ does keep showing up among us, not in the ways we planned for. But with a new word, a new wisdom for a new day that we were never meant to anticipate.
Because this life is where we are now, and wouldn’t it be extraordinary if we could flip the script around, so that instead of projecting qualities of this broken world onto the next, we could instead take the hints we get about the wholeness that awaits us and get about the business of living that way now and here?
Maybe All Saints’ Day is the day we’re reminded that the Church isn’t the place where we get free of enemies Jesus asks us to love. It’s where he traps us with some of the most obnoxious ones and says, “Here we are, folks. Shall we get on with it?”
If you’ve been told you’re too much or not enough, if you’ve been carrying fear, shame, exhaustion, or rage, hear this good news. The Lord stands beside you.
And yet a door to another world still stands open to every moment. A door to a better way. Which is to see your life, not as an achievement of your savvy and your will, but as a gift. A gift from a loving God who doesn’t trick us into faithfulness or force us into submission, because that’s not love. A gift from the God who woos us with blessings that are given in spite of our selfish shrewdness, not as rewards. Blessings given simply because it is the nature of love to bless. A door stands open. But you won’t be tricked or shoved through it. Because it’s open to life in the realm of gift and love. It will still cost you everything you’ve tricked this world out of thus far. But could you send all of that to the far side of the river, and limp through the door into another way of being alive?