We meet Saul in our second message in our Easter season series Risen: Living Life in the Risen Christ. In what is probably the most famous conversion in Christian history -- Saul (soon to be Paul) sees a vision of the risen Jesus and everything changes. He wasn't just converted, he was commissioned -- brought into God's family and sent out on God's mission. The same is true for us. We've got to keep our vision focused on the risen Jesus and let that light illuminate our view of God, our jobs, our enemies, and our communities.

This is the first message in our Easter season series called RISEN: Living Life in the Risen Christ. Many of us have been presented an Easter message that goes something like, "That was great that Jesus was raised, now we just have to wait until we're raised, too." But the New Testament is insistent -- if you're a disciple of Jesus, you have (in some mysterious way) already been raised with Jesus so that you can live a new life in the here and now. This series explores some scenes in the book of Acts as we highlight a few characteristics of a risen life in the lives of Jesus' earliest followers and in our lives today. No need to wait, we've got a job to do because Jesus is alive and we are alive in him.

Holy Saturday is a day when disciples of Jesus stand in between death and life, between darkness and dawn, and it leaves us with a choice between despair and hope. But first, we have to go to the tomb and consider those moments when our hope seems to have died. We go with Jesus' followers and ask their question with the world, "Who will roll away the stone?" Who will do something about death, violence, sickness,despair, and pain? To everyone's surprise, the stone is rolled away. We see God on Easter turn a hopeless end into an endless hope.

Whenever something new is on the horizon, we start to form expectations. It's natural but it can also be dangerous because the higher the expectation, the harder the fall can be when things don't go our way. The crowds that greeted Jesus a week before his crucifixion and resurrection had lofty expectations about the kind of king they thought they were welcoming. We need to be honest about our expectations of Jesus. At least when we get our expectations out on the table, Jesus might turn them over and show us what life's really about -- we'll see he's the king we never wanted but exactly the king we need.

Ruth is a story of how God brings newness out of brokenness, it's what God has always been about, putting the broken pieces of the world back together. As Kathy Keasler concludes our series in this incredible drama of redemption, we see at last God restoring a woman who was bitter, empty, and hopeless -- a God who was never sidelined by Naomi's pain and doubts, but rather drew near in faithful love, surrounded her with other image-bearers, and worked renewal even in the most unlikely circumstances.

The story of Ruth reminds that God is work in ordinary people in seemingly ordinary ways. Despite your ordinary surroundings -- you and your story matter to the world. As the story of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz draws to a close, we're on the edge of our seat to see if God really does bring newness out of brokenness in unlikely, ordinary places. He's been at work on the road, in the field, and even now in a legal drama that will seal the fate of Naomi's land and her family line. How will God bring renewal? If we look closely, we see our stories are always set against the backdrop of God's great story of worldwide renewal.

Is Ruth a love story? Yes. But not in the way you might expect. This week we find our 3 primary characters in this Story of Renewal involved in a mysterious midnight encounter. It may sound like a scene out of a romantic movie but the kind of love we see here is so much deeper. Love is a choice to relate to another as valuable, even at cost to yourself. The costs are high, the choices are staggering, and each of our players in this drama continue to choose the way of faithful love even if it might cost them everything.

Imagine you've come home and your house is destroyed. Your neighbors are left untouched but all you see at your feet is the rubble of what was your home. Your thoughts race and you wonder, "What do I do now?" Incredible loss has swept through Naomi's life. She's out of options and help doesn't appear to be on the way. What does she do? She heads home. She weeps. She screams at God and wonders why on earth he could do this (Did he do this?). Naomi experiences deep suffering and in the middle of it, Ruth shows the deepest faithfulness. We see two strong women lean into God and begin to experience a deeper trust in him. In this sermon we explore some big questions about suffering and evil and the most important question in the midst of our pain -- What do we do now? Ruth shows us that God's love is rock solid and he's always at work for good, even if the evidence is to the contrary.

The book of Ruth is a story of how God works newness out of brokenness. Our six-week series in this story opens with a twist beginning: famine, relocation, and death. The brokenness this family experiences is laid out in five short verses and leaves us with questions we may have asked in our own dark days -- "Why has this happened? What do we do now? God, where are you?" The book of Ruth won't give us all the answers, but if we follow this family's story to the end we see a God who always at work in ordinary people in ordinary ways, even when things look hopeless. **This week's "Story of Renewal" is from Britt Stiles** // Benediction by Walter Brueggemann

"Epiphany" means a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of things. In this message from Robin Craddock, you are invited to step into the world illuminated by the appearing of the Christ child -- the long-awaited King that became the treasure of wise men and the threat to King Herod. Where might we find ourselves in this story?