We are limited. We have limited time. Limited energy. Limited scope. We can seek to overcome those limits and push through them with unusual feats of power. Or we can simply live within them, yet somehow still accomplish what good things we can. As we focus on the gifts themselves, and their purposes, we accept our limits but do not focus on them. Something beautiful starts to happen. We bear fruit! Perfect fruit. 

We are left in this world with hints of the next. We are being invited, even lured, into its existence. But it does not work like ours. It is not tangible. Yet. But it conspires for us. For those who seek the good. For those willing to believe, able to imagine there can be another reality. A better one. And somehow, someday, we can get there.  

Growing old is a process none of us can stop. Even as the promises of technology boom, there is something essential about dying. Humanity would lose without it. But what is it about the process of dying that is so essential to our experience of living? We will deep dive on that and more as we continue this series on the afterlife. 

This week we start a new series on the afterlife. What happens at the end of all things? As we imagine a life that never ends, it is possible to start dreaming of one that isn’t dreary or on endless repeat? John Lennon’s Imagine helps us start the process. The Christian Eschaton finishes it. There is more, much more. That is good news!

Knowing your why’s in life can save an enormous amount of stress. We can cut through layers and layers of baggage. But knowing your why is not a theoretical exercise. It is not merely philosophical, detached from life. Our why’s eventually must connect to our what’s, and this tends to happen most in our creative life. 

Failure and death are uniquely tied together. Failure is directly tied to scarcity. To a sense of lack. Usually time (which assumes death). We fear we have missed something. By recognizing the sting of death is gone, life wins, we get back our sense of wonder and no long fear losing something that is already ours: time. 

Sooner or later it will happen. It is the one certainty of life. Death reveals much about beginnings. Death teaches us about living, if we let it. The more we explore it, the less death seems like the end, and the more it seems like is a portal into our next beginning. No more running from death. Somehow, we must learn to embrace it. 

Faith is seen as a key, but what does it unlock? This week we explore what it would like if you shopped for faith like you would a new shirt at the mall. Which store would you hit? Why? What is being offered there? As we navigate the mall of faith, really note the stores and what is being offered there. Do all roads really lead to the same basic place?  

There is a soul behind the world - a world within the world. It is a meaningful place full of life. A place where hope makes sense. Where the eternals (beauty, goodness, and truth) and free to roam. It is a world within a world. But without the experience of such a world it can seem impossible or far-fetched. Or worse yet, make-believe. But be sure, a world of love and peace does exist. The only question is, will we find it? 

Part of grief's job is to stun us back into childlike wonder. It helps us realize we are not, and never were, in control. We are subject to its whims but realize here that those whims are not for evil. Grief is designed to resurrect true hope. Death becomes a form of mercy, a call to wonder, a reality that can not be avoided, but can be celebrated. Because resurrection is real, death can be welcomed. 

Death can not be avoided. It is the the ultimate ghost writer of grief. It is the black hole we are drawn into by grief. Yet, death does not have the final word. Death’s power has been broken. If you can accept the idea of resurrection, death becomes a portal. Yes, we still face grief, but it is not a stopping point. Like a yield sign, it is temporary stop. Grief eventually transforms into something beautiful, but only as we continue to move.

In this mini-series we will deep dive into the powerful world of grief. As humans we can not ignore or bypass grief. We must go straight through it. There are many traps in grief, and once finally there many want to stay. We can not. The art of grief is letting it take its course and learning along the way what we need to in the process. No shortcuts. Also no long stays. Grief is growth—hard, lasting growth.

We live in this life without a definitive roadmap of the future. Life happens to us. From the beginning we are passive, mere recipients of a gift that we did not ask for. Life is bigger than us. We can not control it. Attempts to do so only fail. Life has its own will and we either submit to it or we fight it. Don’t fight it. Be there! Be in it. This is life to the fullest. This is the surrendered life.

No matter where we get in life, nor what we accomplish, we are always being invited to keep going. To keep moving on. We can’t let our failures, or even our successes, stop us. Life is too big. You are not done yet. But the next realm will seem like a vast sand pit. One you do not yet understand. It is currently beyond you. But don’t let that vastness scare you. Celebrate it. And don’t fight the fear of entering it. Embrace it.

When the power of the Universe is on your side, what can you not do? If we can let ourselves believe that we have been chosen for this dream put inside us, obstacles hit differently. Tell this mountain to move out of our way becomes reality. We start to see the eventual challenges of our calling not as something wrong, but as something to be learned.

We are actually free to think what we want about the universe. We are. But we typically “cook the books” of providence to tell a certain story, the one we are already telling ourselves - whether it is true or not! Are we actually willing to see what is really there, to challenge our own thinking and to get out of a merely rational posture in order to do so? If so, come alone and read this week’s blog!

The only way to see a vision is to be a few steps ahead to see where the vision lies. Most people aren’t willing to walk ahead of the group that far. Or to walk that close to the ledge. But if you are called, do it. Once there, what you see will be worth it. Yes you will not see everything, but you will see enough to know where to go. Go there!

There are two worlds we live in, simultaneously. One is invisible. We enter it humbly with grace and exit it with wonder and beauty. The other is the visible world we all live in and see. Our context. The reality we find outselves situated in. We must, for now, go between these two worlds. We can not stay in one. We need both to find the vibrancy we so desire. Let the tension between them be a guiding light you are in the right place.

There is a whole other world that haunts our world. We are invited occasionally into its spaces, if we have eyes to see. We can find portals into this world in the beauty all around us. If we look long enough, we can find it. Hidden treasure is here. Even now.

The most important things in life are invisible. Yet there is a deep desire in the human experience to articulate them, to somehow bring them to light and life. This profound impulse to describe what is impossible to see drives all artists. Even visual artists are ultimately trying to bring the invisible to light. But why? Why do we feel the need to articulate such things? And thank God for the artists and poets that do!