Journey to the Cross

Pause

The Spirit of Christ is already within you:

forgiving, healing,

redeeming, loving.

The God of our salvation is here.

Listen

You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.

Ephesians 2:8-10

Think

It can be hard to talk about our faith. It’s a mystery, right? Certainly not a formula or even a set of propositions. Faith is a gift and a way of being. Our attempts at description too often fail us. Sometimes an image can hold up a little better.

Here’s one: Faith is like a fire. Sometimes it’s a roaring blaze and other times smoking kindling or crumbling embers.

We can collect the wood or neglect to do so. We can shield it from the wind and rain or ask others to get down on our knees with us and gently blow on the coals. We can even extinguish it, or appear to, through our neglect or conscious action. It does, though, have a way of flaring up unexpectedly when we have our backs turned.

We are keepers of the fire, but we cannot create it. Matches, flint, and steel — these only manipulate or release energy that God has put in the world.

Faith is a gift. Our job is tending to the fire.

Kyle Matthew Oliver

Pray

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, enlighten with celestial fire.

Your blessed healing from above is comfort, life, and fire of love.

Amen.

Adapted from “Veni Creator Spiritus,” John Cosin.

Go

God’s mercy endures forever.

We are imperfect,

yet we are called:

to freedom, to risk, to love.

God’s mercy endures forever.