JR. Forasteros - December 6, 2020
Persistent Hope
Too many Christians today wonder what the point of caring for the world is if we all go to Heaven after we die. But at the heart of the Advent message is an insistence that Jesus' coming is good news for the whole world. What does that look like? And how is the fact that we're waiting for Jesus to return good news?
From Series: "Christmas at the Crossroads"
2020 has been a year of a lot of changes. How can we navigate change well? How can we be prepared for a future that hasn't manifest yet? This Advent season, we're exploring how God's people prepared for the unexpected arrival of Jesus - and how that can help us prepare for what's ahead of us!
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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.
