Day1 Weekly Program Alliance for Christian Media, Inc.

In this world, the poor, the ravaged, the humiliated ones are left on the outside. But in the justice of God, the poor and afflicted, the ravaged and humiliated shall be welcomed. In their pride and in their prejudice, human beings (even religious people; perhaps especially religious people) devote so very much energy to judging and excluding people like dark-skinned Ethiopians, the disabled and the different, the poor and the homeless. But God does not see people the way that we do, and so, the psalmist is sure that all those who seek shall praise God and find God's welcome.

When we focus on the word “walk” in Psalm 23, we realize that any time we find ourselves in the shadow of the valley of death or the shadow of a huge obstacle or the shadow of change and transition, the best and only thing we can do is keep walking. Just keep walking. You want to obsess over finding cause and effect. Fine. But just keep walking. You want to rail at God about your pain or misfortunes. Fine. Just keep walking. You want to ask why all the time. Fine. Just keep walking. Why? Because with movement comes meaning.

History abounds with stories about what can happen when people hear the Good News shared by a believer. You’ve probably heard one. Maybe you are one of these stories of lives changed by an encounter with the resurrected Christ though the witness of someone else. Sometimes it’s as simple as a foster parent I know who regularly says to those she cares for, “God loves you, and I do, too.” Other times it’s the answer to a question. A person may ask you, “How are you able to...

I don't know many people who would buy a used car sight unseen. No, they go and they check it out. They drive the thing. This is the doctrine we live by: "Seeing is believing." But here is a truth with which we must come to terms today. The church of the resurrected Jesus Christ is founded on a complete reversal of this doctrine. Now, it is "believing is seeing," and not the other way around.

In his Easter message, the Rev. Marek Zabriskie says God's answer to whatever threatens, imperils, or ails us is to write "nevertheless" over our lives, and to move the immovable stones that are blocking us from living the kind of life that God is calling us to lead.

On this Palm Sunday, I wonder about the opportunity we have to confess the fact that in a deep way, maybe somatically, maybe through the structures of empire, we are complicit in worshipping the machinations of empire rather than living from the sacrament of our baptism, following the vulnerable, truth-telling ways of Jesus of Nazareth. Confession, letting go, untethering from the ways of empire are the ways in which we walk into salvation through Jesus Christ. But it also means that we have to be intentional with how we live and yes, the reflective time that we have every day.