As I get older, and lose more of the people I love, I hang much less hope on my rational comprehension of whatever awaits us on the far side of death. Scripture itself isn’t very clear about the details and I haven’t yet been visited by an angel with inside information. But my trust in the truth and the hope of the scriptures somehow has only deepened over the years. And I find myself, if not more certain about the details, so much more confident in the divine Love that awaits us. I do believe that somehow all the vulnerable infants, and all the anxious parents, the hopeful, foreign wise ones and even the violent tyrants, all exist only within the absurdly wide mercy of God. So do you. So do I. So do all of the living. So do all of the dead.

“Let it be unto me according to your will,” was not an act of blind obedience or resignation to a fate. It was an opening of a space in Mary to receive the gift of God. And in doing so, Mary wasn’t setting herself apart from us. She was showing us the way.

What do you need emptying of, dear virgin friends, so that God can prime you with glorious gifts, that your life might be given away with no expectation of return?

But if we wake up resolved to choose a relationship with God, we can be fairly certain that we’ll be asked to do things that might make the neighbors talk, that might push us toward people we’d otherwise avoid, that we’ll be asked to stand up for truths that aren’t popular or even sensible. I hate to say it, but sometimes it might even look like our lives are on fire.

" Mutual grace seems to be part of Paul's plan to unite the early Christian Church, and every generation of believers has had to grapple with this question of what is foundational to our faith. This ongoing work requires both the intervention of the Holy Spirit and I think a measure of sacred imagination to envision what has not yet come to be. And in this season of Advent, we are invited to slow down to exhale in the midst of the busyness of the season as we prepare our hearts and our minds for the coming of God incarnate."

The only moment we really ever have to become the self that Jesus is calling and loving and inviting us to be is the moment we’re in right now.

Your King is with you. Not far above, but right beside you. Not condemning, but companioning. Not turning away, but turning toward you.

We just keep showing up together in the present with the lives we actually have. And maybe find that the risen Christ does keep showing up among us, not in the ways we planned for. But with a new word, a new wisdom for a new day that we were never meant to anticipate.

Because this life is where we are now, and wouldn’t it be extraordinary if we could flip the script around, so that instead of projecting qualities of this broken world onto the next, we could instead take the hints we get about the wholeness that awaits us and get about the business of living that way now and here?

Maybe All Saints’ Day is the day we’re reminded that the Church isn’t the place where we get free of enemies Jesus asks us to love. It’s where he traps us with some of the most obnoxious ones and says, “Here we are, folks. Shall we get on with it?”

If you’ve been told you’re too much or not enough, if you’ve been carrying fear, shame, exhaustion, or rage, hear this good news. The Lord stands beside you.