There are times when we may even have to do the tough forgiving of God, loving him anyway for the many blessings of his gift of life even when all of it does not go the way we want. He can take our anger, our screams, and our questions. But I truly believe it grieves him when we reject him. Plus the fact that we cut ourselves off from the very one who binds our wounds and dries our tears when life falls in on top of us.

God knows we need visible signs of his invisible reality, presence, and love. That's what excited John and Paul: the invisible God showed his face in the visible Jesus Christ on earth. And do you know the greatest miracle is that God still comes alive in human flesh. Even in you and in me! Not always, but often when I needed a hug, forgiveness, a shoulder, a kick, or some encouragement, someone has been there.

We make a big mistake when we equate self love with selfishness. They are opposites. The most selfish people I know, the times I do the most damage to myself and others, occur not when too much is thought of ourselves but too little. God, protect us from the times we put each other down as we desperately try to put ourselves up.

Whether you go directly to God through prayer, reflection, and worship or whether you go to the people he uses to get his help to you, help is there. Yet you have to be not man enough but CHILD ENOUGH to ask for help. 

The Easter message is this: give your energy to your fears and you'll be a ball of nerves and premature corpse in return. Give your strength to Jesus' feeding and hugging way with God's children and you'll be given, life to the brim back, life now and forever. 

Jesus has shown us the kind of life that death cannot ultimately take. It is the misfitting, brakes-off caring life that the resurrection shows God wants from us. The God of Jesus calls us to stop worrying about our death so much that we never really live.

God is the giver of the strength to live with, in spite of, and even because of that which we at first feel we cannot live. That power to change ourselves when we cannot change anything else comes from other people, from prayer, from life in the church, and from God only knows where within us. But it comes.

God is not some demon-god standing aloof from us when we are sick, hurting, and afraid. He is with us hurting, suffering, and struggling to overcome.

I don’t know where you are hurting right now...If you are to get any relief, I doubt it will happen on a mountaintop. It will more than likely happen by letting someone listen to you, hug you, and love you. Through the skin of other humans you may just find that God is not far away but very close to you.

To overcome “walking paralysis,” we at some point have to stop trying to impress God, others, and ourselves and trust that they might simply love us for ourselves instead of for our accomplishments of who we pretend to be. Faith is listening to and letting God and others move us away from old paralyzed ways to new ways of loving each other.

We forget that Jesus said that the kind of peace he gives to humans is very different from the world's version of peace. The peace of Jesus Christ is not anesthesia that numbs but a disturbing peace that makes us look ourselves and fellow humans in the eyes.

UNLESS WE WITH GOD'S HELP MASTER STRENGTH NAVIGATION, THEN WE WILL BECOME VICTIMS OF OUR MUSCLES, MOUTHES, AND BRAINS.

Perhaps the most important thing we need to ask ourselves in life is not have I won or succeeded, but have I grown. It's funny how nothing seems to succeed like failure in helping people to grow. When things are going our way, there is no reason or time to take stock of what our way of life is doing to us and people around us. An occasional brick wall is never fun, but they may be that which makes us stop, check priorities and relationships, and make changes.

The pain we experience in our living may very well be the point at which we will come closest to God's presence in our lives. The pain points may be the contact points with God that get us closer to who we need to be for God, for others, and last, but not least who we need to be for ourselves.

It is tragic that we too are often so busy looking for happiness and the end of the rainbow with stuff and status that we miss the quite simple and close ways, namely people, through whom God gets his love to us daily.

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea.