Thursday, April 20, 2017

The Creative, Life-giving, Life-changing Power of God

In today’s first reading, Acts 3: 11-26, Luke shares the story of the how people responded to the miracle that Jesus performed through Peter and John when they said to a man crippled from birth and who was begging for alms, “…in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk”   (Acts 3: 1-10). He rose and walked for the first time in his life. People were amazed and “looked so intently at [Peter and John] as if [they] had made [the crippled man] walk by [their] own power or piety.”

 Jesus is the same now as then.  He makes all things new. He makes the lame walk, raises the dead to life (the physically dead to eternal life, the spiritually dead to new faith, the psychologically dead to new ways of connecting with others and self that brings new life to them emotionally and psychologically).  We see the creative power of the Triune God at work in winter giving way to spring, in plants “resurrecting” from the soil, in buds bursting open on trees and bushes. Flowers of a variety of colors and shapes beautify our environment in myriad of ways, revealing the beauty, presence  and life-giving power of our God. We see God bringing forth new life in the birth of baby chicks and birds and baby animals of all kinds. And of course, we also see God’s creative power at work in the birth of babies being born to families wanting to work with God in the creation of life among us.

May God be praised, honored, glorified through all of creation. May you and I be a significant part of that glorification, honoring, praising and thanking God by our intimacy with Him, with ourselves and with others in renewing life around us and within us, as the sun renews all of the plant kingdom this spring!

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