Topic: Fear

In order to find our way into the good news of life in all its fullness, we need to first stop denying and distracting ourselves from the bad news we are drowning in.

The good news of resurrection meets us in the darkest places of our lives and so is initially incomprehensible and disorienting.

While many have a passive-aggressive relationship with God, the gospel gives us a vision of God that liberates us to live freely, expansively and joyously.

Jesus never stops crossing the menacing water to come to where we are, saying: “Take courage. It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

Jesus calls us to follow him in being a contagious force for love and mercy rather than fearfully quarantining ourselves from bad influences.

When you know yourself truly beloved by God in Christ, you are freed from fear and shame to live fully and generously and courageously.

We are often afraid to face what must be faced in order to enter the new world God has promised, but God continues to promise an abundance of blessings when we overcome our fears and obey.

Jesus’s encounter with Thomas and the first disciples can show us a thing or two about living under lockdown and hoping for a miracle to save us.

Jesus leads the way towards a new experience of life that is so utterly alive that death is powerless to threaten, limit or constrain it.

The COVID-19 scare can reinforce our Lenten call to prepare our hearts by facing up to our mortality and the real limits of our control over the world.

The forgiveness encountered in Jesus is extravagant and all-inclusive, but those who determinedly reject and demonise the Spirit’s winds of change can cut off their own access to it.

In the face of monumental devastation and suffering, God speaks a word, and the word becomes flesh.