No parent ever helped a child by trying to make all their decisions for them or attempting to keep them in a painprof bubble. The father of the son in the parable couldn’t and we can’t. And even if God could, he doesn’t. He does not take away our humanity and freedom by living for us. He is Immanuel - God with us - God with us in the painful joy and joyful pain of life.

Sometimes, the points in life when we are the closest to giving up on each other or even on God because we have betrayed a trust or been betrayed can be the painful points where we break through to each other and God in ways never known before.

We will be able to cope with life's big problems maturely only as we learn that the strength to keep going ultimately comes from God. He gets it to us through others, from within ourselves. He gets it to us in regular worship at church, disciplined prayer life, and honest study of the Bible and life.

When you and I become servants of God certain love in an uncertain world, then even bumbling and stumbling you and I become examples, witnesses, and proof of that love for others. We can become reasons for others to have certainty in the midst of their personal experiences of life's uncertainty. We can become channels of God's love, givers instead of grabbers.

"Jesus Christ...was not Yes and No; but in him is always yes. For all the promises of God always find their YES in him.” Is God real? Yes. Is he in charge of this world even though it doesn't always look like it? Yes. Does God care about us? Yes. Does he want us to change this warring, hungry world into a peaceful, healthy Kingdom of God on earth? Yes. Can I trust God with my living and dying? Yes.

Each of us can learn a lot from old Bartimaeus. If something hurts, yell. Or better, begin by admitting it to yourself. Then tell someone: God, a friend, a pastor, a counselor, a loved one, someone. It is better than sitting on the side of the road, bottled up, with life passing you by.

Most of all, undergirding all hope, is the battered faith that we are not alone in this track through space, that a caring, mysterious force we call God is at work in us and in the world despite evidence to the contrary.

So, you and I may just be the ones God needs to use to be his gift of presence with someone in a tough situation, no slick words needed or appreciated, just a human body who cares and is close by. "O come, O come, Emmanuel" might be a prayer a person with your face and name can make come true for someone.

Whether you are thinking about Russians you want to bomb, or welfare recipients you resent, or some family member who is about to drive you crazy, or even looking at yourself in the mirror considering giving up, each face in some way is a human face of God.

Yes, it is audacious to say that money to the church is money given to God. But as God as my witness, I believe it. Yet, if you don't believe God uses humans and the church, then don't give your money.

As much as the Israelites and Jesus had to do for themselves and decide for themselves, they were able to make it because of help from beyond themselves as much as from the help that God mustered up within them. It is one of life's paradoxes: no one can solve your problems for you but you can't do it alone either.

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.