Family ... Friends ... Your tribe, your squad. It’s what makes life rich, it’s what we’re made for ... Right? The thing is, in a world that’s increasingly connected, somehow you feel increasingly isolated. How can you be surrounded by people and feel so all alone? Where is that place you yearn to find — that place that feels like home?

Looking around, it can seem like everyone else has it all together. They’re competent, creative, purposeful ... They bring a lot to the table. Looking in the mirror ... Well, you see the gaps, the weaknesses, the ways you fall short. The ways you don’t measure up. Will you ever feel like you’ve got what it takes?

It’s always there, always in the way ... Blocking the way forward ... Weighing you down. Wherever you go, whatever you check off the to-do list, it’s still with you. Fear. Pain. Hurt. Disappointment. If only there were some way to get around it, to leave it behind ... To get unstuck.

The cross ... An inescapable symbol of Easter and the approach to Jesus’ sacrificial death ... and a lens that brings focus to the big questions of life — the seen and unseen wrestlings of our individual lives. What does the victory of the resurrected Jesus mean for our daily lives? He is risen ... Now what? You're invited to celebrate Easter at FAC! (Good Friday services also offered April 19 at 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm).

Atonement ... Restitution ... Making amends. Our sense of justice resonates with these words ... Each of us needs to own our consequences, the penalties for our choices. So in the light of the gap between our imperfection — our selfishness, our weakness, our humanness — and God’s perfection, how do we make things right? How can we even begin to?

When was the last time you failed at something? Who did you tell? Often our instinct is to hide our failures ... to believe that failure is fatal. After all, the news is full of failures of the most public kind. Yet failure is, in some measure, part of life ... If we’re not failing, we’re not learning. So how do we frame failure in a way that’s not so much a dead end as a launch pad?

Where do you see yourself in five years? How will you get yourself there? What’s your endgame? Goals are great, and ambition can give us focus ... But what does ambition look like through the lens of the cross? What can we learn from all Jesus accomplished on the cross and throughout His journey toward it?

Who are you? Beneath what you do, who your family is, what you wear or do or eat ... Who are you, really? The cross and what it represents — Easter and the approach to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection — serves as a lens that brings focus to the big questions of life — the seen and unseen wrestlings of all our lives. What does it show us about who we truly are?

What are you looking at? We’ve all got goals ... ideal outcomes ... a preferred future. And we have a sense of who we want to be — when we get there and in the process. More often than not, what we’re aiming for — and who we're following to get there — shape who we become. What’s the view through your front windshield? Are we there yet?

We’ve all been there ... Seen our best intentions — to be disciplined, productive, kind, ethical — fade in the moment of truth. We look back on it and wonder what happened — how the thing we knew was the right thing to do or to say buckled under the pressure of ... of what? What is it that diverts us? Will we ever get better at this?