The Best News Ever Ben Bouwers

To a people looking for a ‘Shepherd’ Messiah - liberator whose best imagination of a good Shepherd was being under someone’s control and resisting that control by violence and force - Jesus reveals beauty that looks like a life lead and layed down in love.
Liberating life not defined by consumption, control and certainty but a life revealing the mystery of Christ in our midst - most visible by love revealed in a human life.
No wonder Johns epistle says we know we have passed from death to life if we love one another.
Its here that the Good Shepherd is visible in our life.
The good life is a life lead in love.

Beloved faith is not about certainty of outcomes its about trusting the resurrected Christ among us - now...even when it feels the opposite - its trusting His love is more powerful than my anxiety and fears and everything else that hell is attempting to usher into my life and the lives of those around me. It is choosing to live wholeheartedly in the ways of Jesus in the face of uncertainty. When the facts want to drive us into a closed room - we are invited to live wholehearted – He is with us.

The Good News of the Empty Tomb is NOT that we can locate it in Israel today - He is not here. Then where do we locate Jesus? Where Mary Magdalene the disciples met Him - in our lives right where we are in the midst of our fears and uncertainty. It’s here that He proclaims ‘do not be afraid’. He is risen is not as much about an empty tomb as it is about a resurrected Christ who meets us in our life.

The March of Jesus into Jerusalem was not about numbers or noise but a whole new way of living and seeing the world and that is Good News especially to the powerless, weak and vulnerable. A King has come who not just a keeper of Peace by force but who forever secured Peace and Freedom through self giving self emptying love and forgiveness. The real March of Jesus then and now looks and lives like Jesus.

Beloved in a world and to a people that was filled with images of God Jesus is the Perfect Portrait of the Father and that is Good News! He spoke life, removed darkness and restored beauty! In a moment struggling to find clarity we do not need fake buildings and trappings of religion to catch a glimpse of how God feels about you and me. If you want to know what God is like look at the Perfect Picture – Jesus lifted up! Revealing what is killing us and what is healing us!