Church of the Ascension Church of the Ascension

When we stop objectifying God and focus on God as the subject of our lives, we discover that our relationship
with God and one another deepens—not just with family and friends, but with stranger, with those who are the other, who understand the world in vastly different ways than we do.  We stop seeing God as a good shepherd and start experiencing life in the flock in which our shepherd is willing to lay down his life for us. 

We can take comfort in knowing that Jesus is with us and that when two or three are gathered in His name, He
will be in the midst of them. We help each other to seek and to see Jesus by helping each other to be Jesus in the world. Fear never has the last word because fear is born out of isolation and when we invite our Lord into the middle of our messy lives, we are simply acknowledging what has always been and what we should always know and that is that God is always with us.

"Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of the faithful, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind and go in peace to love and serve the lord."

How will your write your story?

On Good Friday God, clears out our hearts and minds and begins the task of renewing and reestablishing his
relationship with man. God knows that we too like those old houses need a little bit of love. God has humbled himself and taken on flesh in Jesus and will now establish that new relationship with man. A relationship grounded in
love and grace that no one can break and that is forever life-giving.

We tell the story of salvation and freedom and promise, and just as the story of the Passover begins with bitter herbs, our story of the Passion begins in that same bitter place.  The ugliness of captivity is not simply the story of the oppressor and the oppressed, it is the story that lays claim upon our own hearts when we are imprisoned by fear and anger and suffering.  It is the story of what Judas would do.