Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As God has sent me, so I send you.”
When he had said this, he breathed on them
and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
—John 20.21-22
Jesus returned not to prove a point,
not to give us something to profess centuries later,
but to give us his spirit,
to breathe his eternal, loving Life into us
so that we would be his new risen body,
raised not as one individual but as a community.
He returned from his grave to send us out of our graves,
send us into the world to love, to forgive, to bless,
to do justice, to labor with God for the mending of the world,
empowered not merely by optimism
but by the infinite Spirit that cannot be killed,
that endures tragedy and overpowers evil
and burrows through death to new life.
Breathe deeply of this mystery.
As God breathes into Eden’s dirt and it becomes a living being,
Jesus breathes into us and we are transformed;
we rise from the dust of our own graves,
and become living beings, risen, reborn, truly alive.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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