It's About Life

 "The glory of God is a human being fully alive!" This was said by the second century Church Father Irenaeus. In Christ God seeks to restore us to what God intended for us from the very beginning of creation, which is to be people who are the image of God! Christ calls us out of our tombs of sin and self-centeredness to become truly alive in showing God's goodness and mercy. This is why Jesus said to Martha just before he raised Lazarus from the dead, "Did I not say to you that if you believed you would see the glory of God!" God is revealed in glory when we respond to God's call to life. In our world people try to make themselves alive through things that promote only themselves. Money, lifestyle choices, focus on sex, forays into the myriads of entrapping addictions --- all these do not remove the stone that covers our tombs. We end up settling for lives of disillusionment and disappointment because we don't see any other way. This is life far below what God wants for us. God in Christ makes us free through looking beyond ourselves to see God's love for us in Jesus' sacrifice for us on the Cross and in his resurrection from the dead. Instead of the false freedom of fulfilling our own desires, we can have the true freedom of being fulfilled by God's desire for us to live for God and for others. This is living in the light of what is good and beautiful. This is the evidence that God did send Jesus to show God's glory by giving us full and abundant life that is dazzlingly real and intriguingly everlasting!