Wisdom realizes we’re shaped less by what we think, and more by what we love. So before Scripture tells us what to do, it is serious about calling us to examine what we want.

Which means wisdom is this: Decide today who you want to be tomorrow. Because the person you become tomorrow is being formed right now.

Christ has never stopped working on you. Christ can see in you what you cannot see in yourself.  The Christian faith is not a story about people who always got it right. It's a  story about a Savior who keeps calling people back to the right path. And when  Christ calls us back, he does more than forgive us. He teaches us how to live. He invites us into a wise way.

Wisdom is the applied knowledge, the practical understanding, we get as we live life, answers the question, “How do I live well? Just one problem. We gain wisdom looking backwards, but we have to live moving forward. Our world is flush with information, but desperately lacking in lived wisdom. Information technologies have not made us more generous, compassionate, or wise.

Wisdom is aligning my life with the way God built the world to work. Wisdom isn’t a principle; it’s a person.

Pentecost demands our desires. It demands those messy, growling-belly parts of our lives we try to hide. When your heart says, “I  want... I desire,” the Spirit challenges us to hand those desires to Christ and say, “Lord, here’s what I want. Maybe this is from you, maybe not. Whatever - make my heart beat for your Kingdom.”

We need the imagination to see who actually sits on the throne. Our conviction is that in Christ is our hope, and the hope of the world. Christians says without apology that Christ is not identified with agendas and parties and movements, but that is he above all kings and all presidents and all governments of the world, and demands a higher allegiance. I am a citizen of heaven who happens to live in America. Any my allegiance is to the principles of faith, hope, and love demonstrated on a cross.

Healing is tricky - there's a lot more to it than just "getting better." When Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law, its not just that she's better; its that she is restored. One woman’s dignity became the public invitation for an entire community. We are restored so that we can stand at the threshold and meet the world,” offering dignity to a world that just wants to know someone cares.

A temple is a place where heaven and earth come mighty close together. In the aftermath of his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is building a new temple, a new place for sacrifice, a new place for reconciliation with God. But it’s not coming in the forms of bricks and mortar. It’s not fundamentally coming by building an organization or an institution. It is coming in you and me, “living stones,” who together, as one body, are being constructed together into a home for God and a place for sacrifice, a thin space where this physical world meets the love of almighty God.

For all the bigness of the gospel, for all the grand proclamations that Jesus is drawing all things to himself, his way of sharing that news is surprisingly small. Jesus is at work in the local. The Church that is committed to the Jesus message and the Jesus method will be deeply committed to local. As my (Pastor Sam) grandmother once told me, “A pastor should smell like his congregation.”

The gospel stories of Easter aren’t merely recounting “what happened.” They show us the first moments of a new world breaking into the old. On the road to Emmaus, two disciples can't recognize the risen Christ because they were looking for victory in the ways of the old world. When the open the Scriptures and break the bread, they recognize Christ, who has brought new life that has defeated death. And that changes them forever. So it is with us.

Before Jesus sends the apostles to the world or gives them work to do, he gives them an experience of Himself. Because before anything changes out there, something has to change in me. God renews the world, beginning in the hearts of people. Peter describes it in 1 Peter—a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not a metaphor for self-improvement. It is a way of saying that the very life of God has been breathed into us.

Faith compels Mary to be at the tomb even without hope, to be faithful without “purpose.” And it is precisely that faithfulness that places her at the moment the light of the world is revealed. In her darkness, she kept moving. And so did God.

While it was still dark, Jesus had already risen from the dead, and the risen Christ was already moving towards her, closer than she could know. While Mary is in despair, Jesus was already risen. While Mary is weeping beside the tomb, Jesus was already risen. While it’s still dark, God was at work. And so it is still.