What worms its way into your head and steals sleep? Where does fear enter your life?
We all have a list, and probably the same items are on everyone's list, just in a different order: finances, health, relationships, violence, personal well-being. To sum them all up: we are afraid that this whole world - our whole world - is going to fall apart right before our eyes.
Jesus tells us we can count on it. That is one of primary assumptions of the cross: the powers that rule this world are going to lead us only to death. True, the dramas of our lives are often small compared to the wars and violence in the world, yet as my Grandma would have said, "Your troubles are bad, but my troubles are my troubles." Our dramas are big to us.
So on some scale we fear that the world is falling apart and it very difficult for us to trust that God is working in the midst of the destruction to bring about new creation. Life is in the midst of death; life arises out of death. The ashes around us are a sign of the labor pangs of new life birthed by God.
We are the midwives. That is our job in this new creation. To ease the labor, protect mother and child, to assist in the birth of the new. Jesus insists on standing in the graveyard and speaking of the pangs of birth. That is what hope looks like.
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