JR. Forasteros - December 15, 2019
Hope as Resistance
Hope isn't automatic. To be a person of hope means to live into the "maybe". Maybe things will be better if we act. Isaiah invites us to rejoice as an act of hope.
From Series: "Christmas is for Dreamers"
The Christmas season is full of joy, of lights and parties and festive decor. But the reality for many of us doesn't live up to that cheery facade. The prophet Isaiah knew what it was to live in a dark world hoping for light. His dreams of the coming savior help us celebrate Christmas exactly where we are... as we dream of the perfect world that is to come!
More Messages From JR. Forasteros...
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Today’s about Ghost stories. Though they appear in many forms, the quintessential ghost story involves the spirit of a dead person who’s stayed around (usually a haunted house) because they have unfinished business. Maybe they have to deliver a message or ensure proper burial or get revenge. Whatever the case, once their business is complete, they leave into the afterlife.
Unlike our previous two monsters, today we’re not ghosts. Rather, to quote Peter Rollins,
We are the haunted houses. — Peter Rollins
We move through life collecting hurts, wounds and scars, evidence of pain inflicted on us by other people. Some may be slight, exaggerated in our heads – maybe someone who cuts us off or says something cruel or who causes us harm by accident. Others could be huge, life-altering. A spouse who left. An abuser. And there’s a whole range of hurts between.
Whatever their source, however legitimate or not, these people, these hurts don’t just exit our lives.
We carry them around with us, in our heads and in our souls. They haunt us, returning again and again out of the ether to drag us through the past, to relive history, to reopen old wounds.
The problem is we don’t know what these ghosts want. We don’t know how to resolve their business and get them to leave us. We can’t escape their haunting – especially if the person who hurt you is still a part of your life.
