My life is different than I’d once imagined it would be, not certain if that’s a universal experience.  Is your life what you started out to make it?  Did you have an image of where you’d be, what you’d be doing at your current age?

I don’t think I did.  Me, in my 60’s, still doesn’t feel like reality, and I’m living it.

Frontloading… doing all the fun stuff first… that’s rarely the way I attack a situation – not even a dinner plate – I’m the one who eats around what I enjoy most, saving the best for last.  Examining my time off, travel, time surfing, it would be easy to imagine that I was frontloading and saving all the hard stuff for later on… when maybe I’d be ready for hard stuff.

Some afternoons I’m surrounded by people speaking Spanish that I can’t follow or respond to – we embrace – I put gas in my car, out of my paycheck, to spend several hours driving just for a couple of hours passing out paychecks, money for bills and food, sitting at a table with friends and eating, watching abandoned children play in the safety of the home we built them… it’s an amazing thing…

Some evenings, into the depths of the night, I stand with friends in the heart of urban poverty.  Darkness so complete that it chases all but the craziest, the hungriest, the desperate… far from our circle… and we embrace… I shake hands and speak to dozens and dozens of people… I sing out loud – old songs – tell corny jokes – lift my arms and lead those lost in pain to The Lord in prayer.  They accept me.  We spend an hour or so together on the sidewalks of what was once skid row like the old friends some of us are – some of us have known each other in our weekly one hour gathering for decades – and good things happen where they shouldn’t really… it’s a miracle… so ephemeral that some nights it seems like it must be impossible.

I bury people.  Stand at their gravesides and say the final words before a family gets into their cars and says the most difficult so long’s that are ever said – knowing the separation will be impossible to bear.  Today it will be Betty.  A wonderfully loving mother of friends I hold so dear to my heart.  We’ll gather like family.  Laugh.  Cry.  Say goodbye.  This couldn’t be me…

Hope.  Practical… in a way that applies to the most complex theological issues we face as the created.  I strive to bring Hope that heals, holds, reconciles and reconnects.  Friday – Good Friday – The Message of the cross.  Sunday, Easter Sunday – celebrating the resurrection and our invitation to say “Yes!” to a life that’s bigger than anything we could ever imagine.  Life Big enough to salve our heartbreak with Real and Healing Hope, today, forever… I’ll do it this weekend and Lord willing I’ll do it again next weekend.  Weekends…  It seems like we’d eventually begin to get it right.  Not sure why God uses me… except that I said “Yes.”  I’m pretty sure that’s what He wants from all of us.  “Yes.”

Don’t even remember what the life I once imagined might have looked like… mainly because my blessings… countless blessings… have washed that old life away.  I don’t miss it.  Wouldn’t trade one afternoon with the people I love in Mexico, the friends I love in the heart of our city, the fellowship I share in our incredible church – a small part of God’s Great Big Kingdom – for even one of those imaginary moments… as fun as they may have once seemed.

My family – in more ways than I’ll ever begin to comprehend – has played such a vital role in making the miracle  the life I’m experiencing possible.  Each of them, at some point, embraced the incredible calling on our hearts as that of their own.  They’ve traveled, served, loved, sacrificed and laughed… giving themselves wholeheartedly to our adventure together.  Some moments it feels as if my life, my being, my becoming is a celebration of all their greatest hopes for me.

I stood in the road as our 2 year old grandson refused to – or struggled to call me “grandpa.”  He called me “gramp.”  Laughing, smiling, almost teasingly with eyes that sparkled he called me “gramp.”

And I felt like a million bucks.

Examine all that’s good in your life.  Not the threatening stack of bills or the loss that refuses to let go of your heart… but all that’s good in your life and celebrate.  Let God awaken the adventure that was dead within you and enter into this Easter weekend with new Hope.  Hope built on the many blessings that you never imagined.  They’re there if you’ll take a moment to look for them.

Wonder in this: God, The Uncreated One, loves us and wants to open that which is blind in us to new life.  God, The Alpha and Omega, Beginning and the End, is inviting us to a bright morning with the adventure we were created to live out – the one we never imagined – it’s waiting still for the first page to be turned if we’ll only say “Yes.”  God, The Great I Am, is inviting us to each other… to a new unity we’ve yet to discover… to love… pervasive and impossible in its power to open eyes, heal and restore that intangible something that we continue to miss in our lives so filled with the meaningless.

We belong together.  It’s at the core of each of our earliest hopes, dreams and imaginings.  We’re being invited to The Celebration of Creation.  RSVP when you feel His Hand on your heart.  Say “Yes” to the life that fulfills the dreams we’ve never dared to dream.  It’s who you were created to become.  It’s why we so desperately need a resurrection.  Incredibly… You’re Invited!