Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
“Look at my hands and my feet;
see that it is I myself.
Touch me and see;
for a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you see that I have.”
—Luke 24.39
The Roman Imperium by its sword
tried to sever Jesus from his life,
to pry him from his own flesh;
and their minions ever since have sought
to separate the spiritual from the physical.
Death, they reasoned, ought to do it well.
How daft of them to think
The One who made all things,
who crafted earth and us from dust,
who fashioned smooth and rugged stones,
and lungs and lips and eyes and hands,
and bones that bear their burdens
with such elegance and grace,
and skin, its mounds and cups and curves
and plains and folds so eloquent,
alluring, and divine—
that the Creating One would by their force
forget pronouncing all things,
in their concrete thingness, good.
They didn’t know the one thing that God wants
is for all love to be made flesh.
So when they robbed poor Jesus of his breath
and blood, the one thing that God gave him, new
and holy, raising him from death, was this:
a body, flawed but breathing, flesh and bone.
Believer, show yourself your hands and side,
your trembling, lusting, spiritual mass,
your creaking, flabby, leaking, blessed flesh.
Look at your hands, that God has made. This is
the glory in which resurrection comes.
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
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Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net