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Hespeler, May 10, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Christian Family Sunday
Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:8-20, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21

One argument that you might hear against believing in God goes like this. The atheist reminds the believer that, in the history of the world, people have believed in many different gods. People have worshipped gods like Zeus and Jupiter. They have pledged their faith to Athena, Ra, Odin and Thor, and the list goes on and on.

“But you,” the atheist says to the believer, “You reject all of those gods. You think that all of those people were wrong to believe in them. Well, I just wanted to let you know that I agree with you. I don’t believe in any of those gods either. In fact, we are almost the same. It is just that I believe in one less god than you.”

I Don’t Get It

I don’t know about you, but I have come across that argument a few times, and I have to admit that it doesn’t quite make sense to me. I get the implication. The idea is that the rejection of any idea of God is merely the logical extension of what everyone does when they choose not to believe in Zeus or Odin.

But there are some big assumptions behind all of that that I do not accept. And without those assumptions, the argument falls flat.

Paul in Athens

But rather than talk to you about my assumptions, let me dig into what the Apostle Paul says in our reading this morning from the Book of Acts instead, because I think that we are on much the same wavelength when it comes to these matters.

In this passage, Paul is in the city of Athens, which is the heart of Ancient Greek religion, philosophy and culture. Since the Athenians love to talk and debate about everything, when Paul shows up in the city and starts preaching strange new ideas about a guy named Jesus and about the resurrection, he causes a bit of a stir.

At the Areopagus

And so, he is invited to address a meeting of the Areopagus. The Areopagus was named after a rugged hill in the centre of the city, the hill of the god Ares. Likely originally a place devoted to the war god where Athenians mustered for battle, centuries of peace had transformed the gatherings associated with that hill into more of a debating society where they gathered to talk about the latest and trendiest ideas.

This is a remarkable opportunity. Paul is, both from his Jewish heritage and from his new Christian faith, a monotheist. He believes that there is only one God who is the Creator of heaven and earth and the Father of his Lord Jesus Christ.

A Perfect Opportunity to Criticize

And here he is in the very centre of Greek polytheism – in the city of the goddess Athena and surrounded by ancient temples dedicated to the great gods of the Olympian pantheon. These people believe in so many gods that Paul doesn’t believe in.

So, Paul has a perfect opportunity to attack them for their beliefs. He could do a whole routine. “Are you telling me that you actually believe in a god who turned himself into a <snigger> golden shower to seduce a princess?” “And is the patron goddess of your city so petty that she once turned a woman into a spider because she was a better weaver?”

Yes, Paul could have attacked all of the Greek gods and offered reasons why they were ridiculous. Every religion, including our own, has certain elements that can be attacked in this manner.

Paul Praises

But Paul does not do this. In fact, he begins by praising them for their belief. “Athenians,” he says, “I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way.” And he seems to mean this sincerely. In fact, he points to one particular thing about their spirituality that particularly impresses him. “For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’”

These sorts of altars did actually exist in the ancient world, by the way. None have actually been dug up in Athens, but they have been found in many other ancient cities, including one in the very centre of Ancient Rome.

Paul doesn’t bring this altar up to make fun of them, though. He is not laughing at them because they have so many gods that they lose track of them or anything like that. He celebrates the fact that they are stretching towards divinity that they do not understand. “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

Unknowingly Worshipping God

That is remarkable when you think about it. Here is Paul, speaking to these polytheists and suggesting that they have been unknowingly worshipping the same God that he, a monotheist, worships. How can this be?

I understand it like this. If God exists – if there is a supernatural being who created all things and is somehow involved in keeping the universe running – that God, almost by definition, is beyond all human understanding.

Human Limitations

We can’t describe or define God. Our human language does not have the words. Nor can we imagine or conceptualize such a God because our human minds are too limited.

That means that whatever we can say or think about God is going to be imperfect and incomplete. And yet, as human beings, we are drawn to God. It seems to be built into our very humanity.

Imperfect Concepts

And so it is that almost every civilization has come up with some concept of the divine. They tell stories and write poetry about beings who are beyond their understanding.

Are all of these ideas that they have about their gods completely true and correct? Did the gods of the Greeks literally live on Mount Olympus? Did the Norse gods ride eight-legged horses over a bridge made out of a rainbow? Of course not. At best these are metaphors and myths that may point to some truths about a universal deity. They represent human attempts at reaching towards a reality that human minds cannot comprehend.

How They Stretch Towards God

And that is what Paul celebrates in the Athenians. They are stretching towards a God who is a lot like the God that he proclaims. In fact, he congratulates them on getting a number of things right about God.

He gives them a quote from one of their own religious poets. He cites the poet Epimenides, who lived in Crete in the sixth century BC. Epimenides wrote, “In him we live and move and have our being.” And then he quotes the Stoic philosopher, Aratas, who wrote two centuries later, “For we, too, are his offspring.”

These two men lived centuries before the time of Christ, so think about what Paul is saying here. He is saying that, for a very long time, the Greeks have carried with them accurate understandings about the same God that he worships.

About Zeus

What’s more, both of these philosophers wrote these words about the Greek God Zeus. So, Paul is actually saying to the Greeks that, by believing in Zeus, they were striving towards belief in the true God. He is effectively saying that they were somewhat right to believe in Zeus for all those centuries.

Of course, he is also saying that their belief was imperfect and incomplete and that he has some better information for them, but he does not say that they were wrong.

Paul Has Better Information

Paul believes that he has better information because of what he has experienced in Christ Jesus. And that is indeed what Christians have claimed ever since – that God has revealed Godself to humanity in a unique way in Jesus Christ.

But does that mean that Paul is saying that he has the full and absolute truth about God, that he has completely comprehended the nature of God? He would not claim that. He, too, is merely reaching towards a God who remains unknowable to mere humans. It is just that he has been assisted in that quest by his faith in Jesus Christ.

We All Get It Wrong

So that is I why I do not really buy the argument of the Atheists who say that they just believe in one less god than I do. Yes, I do not believe in the reality of gods like Zeus and Thor. But I do recognize that the people who did believe in them were reaching towards the same truth that I am reaching towards.

Even more important, I also recognize that my concept of God is also flawed and incomplete. Yes, the Creator of heaven and earth has been uniquely revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, but I have barely scratched the surface of who Jesus really is. And the God that I worship is ultimately unknowable in human terms anyway. That is one of the things that makes God worth worshipping.

Masculine Ways of Imagining God

And all of this speaks very meaningfully to me on this day known as Mother’s Day. I am always made aware of how inadequate our language and understanding of God are on the second Monday in May.

So many of the ways we talk about God, for example, are masculine. We particularly love to call God, “Father.” And not without reason, of course, because that seems to have been Jesus’ favourite way to refer to God.

And calling God a heavenly Father is indeed a beautiful way to speak. It celebrates God’s love and protection for God’s people. It is a helpful way to talk about God, at least for those who have had positive experiences with their own human fathers. But does it mean that God is male in the way that we human beings experience maleness? Of course not.

Father is a metaphor for God – a way of reaching towards the reality of God that is imperfect and limited by our humanity. But other ways of speaking about God can also reach towards that same reality.

Feminine Ways of Imagining God

On this Mother’s Day, I absolutely affirm that it can be very good to talk about God as Mother too. The Bible itself does use mother language to speak about God.  “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you,” God says in the Book of Isaiah. (Isaiah 66:13) And also, “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these might forget, yet I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15)

God is said to be like a mother bear in the Book of Hosea (Hosea 13:8), and like a mother eagle in Deuteronomy. (Deuteronomy 32:11-12) So even the Bible, written in an extremely patriarchal culture though it was, was able to reach towards God by thinking of God using feminine imagery.

God Doesn’t Fit Human Categories

Why can the Bible talk like that? Because God, being unknowable, does not fit into human categories such as male and female or human roles such as mother and father.

Calling God Mother does not mean God is female any more than calling God Father makes God male. But it is a beautiful reminder that our experiences of mothers and the love that they offer can teach us so much about the true nature of God, even if, as it says in Isaiah, God’s love exceeds even the love of a human mother.

The failure of believers to completely define or even agree about the God that they worship is not a problem for believers. It is certainly not a reason to abandon belief in divinity altogether. Far from despising the ancients or those who follow other religions because they do not imagine the divine in the way that I do, I like Paul, am willing to acknowledge that they are stretching towards the same thing that I am. Like Paul, I am willing to learn from their insights and wisdom.

And if I do recognize that they were imperfect in what they found and in the worship that they offered, I also humbly accept my own failure to properly conceive of God and to offer God all the worship that God deserves.

The ultimate unknowableness of God is not a bug; it is a feature. It encourages us continually in our quest to find God.

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Hespeler, May 3, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 6:8-15, 7:55-60, Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16, 1 Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14

According to the Gospel of John, in the middle of the Last Supper, Jesus turned to the disciples and he said, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

And what has the church responded to that ever since? “Oh yes,” the church has declared, “we know where you are going, Jesus. You are going to heaven. You are going to a place of bliss.

“And because we know the way to that place where you are going, we will control who gets to follow it. We will tell everyone what the way is and, unless they all listen to us and do exactly what we say, they will never get there.”

Sacraments

The church hasn’t always agreed among its various branches on what that way is and exactly how you have to follow it. Some churches will insist that the way to where Jesus went involves you participating in all of the rituals and sacraments of the church, and if you fail to do them all or to do them properly, or if you haven’t participated recently when you die, well, then you can’t follow in the way.

Knowledge

Other churches have insisted that the way actually involves knowledge. You have to know certain secrets that have been passed down to you through the church, and that is what allows you to follow in the way.

Various churches have pointed to different pieces of knowledge. Some have said that you have to know certain things about yourself, such as that you have a spark of the divine within you. Others say you have to learn things about the hidden structure of the universe. Others keep the mysteries that they say you have to understand so well hidden that no one outside of those church has ever been able to discover them.

But whatever specific pieces of knowledge they will point to, they know that knowledge itself is the way and that they are the ones who have control over who can access it.

Faith

And then came the Protestant Reformation. The Protestants finally figured out what the way was to get to the place where Jesus was going. And they knew that the way was through faith. It was all a matter of what you believed.

And so the churches began to map out the way for true followers of Jesus by writing out all of the creeds and the confessions of faith that you had to believe. And if you didn’t believe the things that the church told you to believe – if you were not a proper Five Point Calvinist or a Pre-Tribulation Post-Millennialist or whatever else your church told you to be – then you could not follow in the way.

Relationship

But that was not the only way that the church came up with. Evangelistic churches finally came along to explain what the “true” way was. They said it was actually about forming a relationship with Jesus. You had to do that by responding to the message of the Gospel in the way that they told you – often by praying a particular prayer.

So, yes, down through the years, the church has certainly decided that it knew exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

Not Completely Wrong

I don’t mean to suggest that the church has been utterly wrong in the ways that it has told people to follow in the way of Jesus. Obviously, following in the way of Jesus has a great deal to do with questions of Christian practice, knowledge, faith and personal devotion.

But I can’t help but think that we may have made a mistake in so confidently teaching people that we know exactly how they ought to follow Jesus to where he was going. And a big part of that is that we decided that we needed to be in control of who gets to follow in the way of Jesus.

Thomas’ Wise Answer

Thomas was one of the disciples present when Jesus said that. And I note that that was not his reaction. He did not jump up and say, “Oh yes, I know exactly what to tell people to do.” He hesitated to take that kind of control over people.

In fact, he spoke up in true humility to say, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And I cannot help but think that perhaps the church would do well to learn something from Thomas and his response. Thomas seems to have been a pretty smart guy.

What Jesus was Talking About

When Jesus spoke about the way to the place where he was going, it turns out that he wasn’t talking primarily about practices, or knowledge, or even faith or a personal relationship. He was talking about something much more essential than that.

And so Jesus explained, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And I realize that ever since this Gospel was written, people have assumed that they understood what Jesus meant by that.

They have assumed, in fact, that Jesus meant whatever their particular church has decided that it means to follow in the way of Jesus. But I think it is time for us to step back from all of those assumptions about what Jesus meant and look at what he said. I suspect that the way of Jesus may be somewhat simpler than we have been led to believe.

I Am the Way

Jesus said, “I am the way.” And that means that we need to set aside all of our assumptions about what we have to do to follow in that way. It is not about what we do for Jesus or how we open that way. It is about what Jesus has done for us and about the way that Jesus has opened.

He said, “I am the way.” That means that it is actually not about the destination. Following in the way of Jesus is not about getting you to some heavenly bliss someday. Yes, that may be the final stop on the subway track, but such a destination is not the primary focus.

If Jesus is himself the way, then it is much more about travelling moment by moment and day by day in fellowship with Christ. It is about living your best life with Jesus now and not waiting for something beyond this world.

An Encounter

In fact, if you want to talk about the destination of this way at all, you ought not to speak of it in terms of a place but in terms of an encounter. The end of the way is the encounter with God. That is what Jesus has to mean when he says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But here is the thing about that. That encounter with the Father does not lie only at the end of the way. Jesus makes it clear that you don’t have to wait until the end of the journey to meet the Father because, as he repeats several times, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

So, God is not just someone waiting for us at the end of this way. God is the one we encounter on the way. We encounter God in the one who is the way for us.

I Am the Truth

Jesus also says, “I am the truth. That means that following in the way is not dependent on the knowledge you accumulate. Yes, you can study the scriptures in all the original languages. You can absorb vast books of theology. And if those things deepen your appreciation of the way that you are on, that is all wonderful. But you don’t hold on to the truth, no matter how much you know. It is the truth that holds on to you.

Our Illusion of Control

We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that, if we can come up with a description or definition of something, we control it. I often hear people say that, because they have a concept of God, they know what God can and cannot do. “If God inspires a piece of Scripture,” someone might say, “that Scripture has to be literally true because God can’t lie.”

Do you really think that, because you have a definition of God, you can tell God what kinds of literature God can inspire? It doesn’t work like that. Your concept of God is just that – your concept. It is always going to be imperfect and incomplete because it is a human concept.

That is what Jesus means when he says “I am the truth.” The truth about God, about the world or your path along the way is not limited by your human understanding. It is all wrapped up in the person of Jesus and it is always bigger than anything your human mind can grasp.

I Am the Life

And Jesus also says, “I am the life.” That is good news because it means that your life is not bound by the limitations of your human body or the human experience of time. Your life is as boundless as the person of Christ.

So, Jesus is saying all of that and more in this incredible statement. But we also need to take note of what he is not saying. He is not offering Thomas or any of the other disciples control over who gets to follow in this way.

The One True Church

As I have already noted, Christians down through the centuries have tried to be the boss of who gets to follow in the way of Christ.

There is one old cartoon that illustrates this perfectly. It features a Sunday School teacher standing at front of his class. On the blackboard is a diagram illustrating the history of the church.

There is one original branch, which then divides again and again to represent the various divisions and disagreements of the church over the centuries, until, at the right end of the board, there are so many different churches that the options fill the entire height of the graphic.

The teacher points to one tiny branch on the edge of the board labelled “our church.” He announces to the class, “Fortunately, with the founding of our church, the true and correct way to follow Jesus was finally found. Unfortunately, everyone else has been consigned to hell.”

We Don’t Set the Limits

That is how we have thought about it – as if there is one true way and we have to be the ones to figure out what that way is. But Jesus says, “I am the way.” You cannot limit any person, much less a divine person, with your doctrines, teachings and confessions of faith. As much as we try to limit what it means for someone to follow in that way, if the way is Jesus himself, all our human limitations will only end up making us look foolish.

In fact, whenever we judge anyone and say that they cannot be saved because of our understanding of the way of Christ, we fail to appreciate what Jesus is saying here. Yes, Jesus does say, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” and that might seem to us to exclude all kinds of people.

Jesus Gets to Decide

But again, we aren’t the ones who get to define what it means to come through Jesus. Jesus is the way; only he gets to define that. The Bible, and especially the Apostle Paul, teaches that the only way to come to God is through faith in Christ. But again, we don’t get to define the full meaning of faith, not even with our doctrines and creeds. Ultimately, it is Jesus who gets to decide who is placing their trust in him.

And, from everything that I have learned about Jesus in my studies of the gospels, I believe that he would define that in very expansive and grace-filled ways. I don’t think that Jesus is the sort to exclude someone just because they don’t sign off on some doctrine or even because they don’t claim the name of Christian.

We Are Not the Way

But, of course, that is just my thinking and you may understand it differently. That is okay. My point is that all of our understandings of such things are limited and may be flawed. And that matters less than you might think because we are not the way; Jesus is.

In the midst of the Last Supper, John tells us that Jesus said, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” And the more I think about that saying, the more I find myself sympathizing with Thomas and replying, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

But Thomas wasn’t expressing frustration or anger when he said that. I think he was expressing exactly the kind of humility that Jesus was looking for in those who would join him in the way.

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Hespeler, April 19, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Third Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:14a, 36-41, Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19, 1 Peter 1:17-23, Luke 24:13-35

Two followers of Jesus are walking down the road discussing the things that they know about him. Everything that they say about him is true; nothing is inaccurate. They know that Jesus was a prophet and mighty in word and deed. They know about his arrest, condemnation and crucifixion.

And they also know about the women who went to his tomb. They are familiar with their reports of seeing angels and not finding his body. And they are aware that the claims of these women have been confirmed by further investigation. And yet, ironically and jarringly, though they know these essential elements of the story that we celebrate every Easter, they find no joy in any of their discussions. They are depressed and walk with sad and downcast eyes.

The Truth

How can this be? They know the truth, and the truth is what matters, isn’t it? All we have to do to change people’s hearts and minds is to show them what is true. But these people know the truth. They know all about it, and it does not seem to be helping them at all. If anything, it seems to only make them feel worse.

A stranger joins them as they walk. He asks of them and receives from them all of the data they have about this man Jesus. He doesn’t give them any new information. And yet, somehow, he seems to change everything for them.

Two-Hour Conversation

And I realize, of course, that some of you are jumping ahead to the end of the story and want to say that this stranger does give them some new information. It turns out at the end that the stranger is himself the risen Lord Jesus. That is a bombshell in terms of new information. But they only realize it after he disappears.

But before that, they are on a seven-mile hike together. That would have made for about a two-hour conversation if they were walking at a reasonable pace. And in all that time, there is no indication that the stranger gives them any new information or evidence.

In fact, he kind of plays dumb. He acts as if he has never even heard of this Jesus of, where did you say he came from again? Nazareeth? He’s never even heard of him before.

How He Moved Them

He somehow takes only their information and is able to spin it back to them so that, even while they are walking and before his secret identity is revealed, their hearts begin to burn within them. With no new information, he can move their hearts from sorrow to joy and from darkness to light.

And that is the effect that I want to focus on today. There are so many in our world who are walking through this life feeling sad and sorrowful. Their sadness is not without reason because they are not lacking in information.

Streams of Information

We are all being fed information all day, every day. Most of us have these little devices in our hands or in our pockets all the time that will, if we let them, be only too happy to feed us a constant stream of information. If we are careful and check where that information is coming from, it might even be accurate information.

We are, in fact, living in the golden age of information – an age when the most accurate truths can be transmitted to a greater number of people more efficiently than ever before.

And what is the result of that? Are more people better informed than ever before? Is the world more united and all on the same page than has ever been possible since the creation of the world?

No, not really. On the contrary, we seem to be more divided than ever before. We also seem to have a harder time agreeing about anything.

More Information Doesn’t Help

So it is clear that more information alone does not lead to more agreement. And, when people already have different opinions, it seems that coming along and giving them more information doesn’t bring people together. It tends to lead them further apart.

To take a simple example, say that you meet someone who believes that the earth is flat, and you say that it is round. If you proceed to offer them evidence – pictures taken from space, experiments that calculate the curvature of the earth, the flight paths of airplanes – what will be their response?

Will the flat-earther simply crumble in the face of your onslaught of truth? Not likely. If you have ever tried to do that, you will have discovered that the more you confront them with conflicting information and hard evidence, the more likely they will be to double down. They will call your facts conspiracy theories. They will reject your sources as corrupt and self-serving.

So, going around and giving people more information is not going to make any of this better and will likely make it worse. So, what do we do? Well, that brings us back to this genius stranger on the road to Emmaus. If he doesn’t bring more information, what does he offer his walking companions to revolutionize their point of view?

What He Told Them

Well, this is what we’re told he did. “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” he said. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”

But he didn’t just tell them this. He actually showed it to them. “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” What he is doing here isn’t telling them anything that they don’t already know. What he is doing is taking the information that they have given him and repackaging it within the larger narrative of Scripture.

Interpreting Their Information

He is saying to them, “Yes, it is discouraging that this Jesus was ‘handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified.’ But look at all the stories in the Bible where God has been able to use suffering and death to bring about hope and salvation for his people.

“And yes, this Jesus may not have redeemed Israel in the way that you had expected, by setting it free from the yoke of Rome, but think of all the times when Israel was under the yoke of Egypt or Babylon or Persia, and God was able to save his people in ways that surprised the whole world! What if God is doing the same thing through what looks like a humiliating defeat of this Jesus of yours?

“And yes, I know you think that these women have lost their minds with their talk of empty tombs and visions of angels, but how many heroes of the scripture have spoken such nonsense before. How many of them turned out to be speaking the word of the Lord when it was needed most?”

Providing a Narrative

He is not giving them more information; what he is doing is giving them a radically different perspective on the information that they already have. He is telling them a story about the information. And that is what makes all the difference.

And that is what the world needs today more than anything else, I believe. We don’t necessarily need more information because we have demonstrated rather clearly that we don’t know what to do with information.

We are living in a time where people will fight and disagree over all kinds of information, including facts that were considered settled just a few years ago. We are living in an age where people hesitate to trust the established experts in any field because they are experts. We are living in an age where it is quite common for people to spend a few hours watching videos on the internet and decide, based only on that, that they know more about a given topic than people do who have advanced degrees and expertise.

Using Stories to Bring Us Together

Information isn’t getting us anywhere these days, at least not anywhere where we can all go together. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing we can do. People have rarely unified over information. What really brings people together is stories.

That is how people make sense of the world – how they have always made sense of the world. People tell stories. They take various facts and information and weave them together into a story that speaks to us much more powerfully than any individual pieces of information ever could.

That is what the stranger offered the travelling disciples on that road to Emmaus. He offered them a story. He took their information about what Jesus had promised, about his rejection and crucifixion and about the strange things that had been observed at the tomb, and he told them a different story about those things. He told them a story about a different kind of messiah than the one that they might have been expecting. And that different story was what made their hearts burn within them.

What We’re Talking About as We Walk

The facts of the world that surround us seem discouraging today. The world has become entangled in a war in Iran from which there is no easy way out. What’s more, the impacts of that war are having devastating effects on a global scale.

On the domestic front, we are dealing with mounting crises: a lack of affordable housing, inflation, an ongoing addiction and mental-health crisis.

These are the kinds of things that people are walking down the road and talking about. And all of these things are disturbing and upsetting people.

The Role of the Church

What then, is the role of the church when this is what people are talking about? We are called to be the stranger who comes alongside people as they walk in that state of anxiety and confusion.

And I know it might be tempting to come alongside people to offer them new information. That is the tendency of our world. We are tempted to say, “Oh look, here are the economic indicators that suggest that things are going to get better.” Or we might say, “This politician or that politician is promising to create this policy that will break us out of this problem.”

Is that going to change people’s mood? I doubt it. That is the kind of information that they have heard a hundred times before and it has only led to more disappointment. No, what they need is a new story that brings new meaning to the facts that they already know. And that is exactly what the Christian faith can offer.

The Stories We Can Offer

We can tell them the story of the incarnation. It is the story of a God who did not avoid the suffering and struggles of this world but actually chose to enter into them. In Christ, God became human so that God might know what it is to live with our fears and our struggles. It is a story that reveals a God of infinite compassion and care.

We can tell them the story of Christ crucified. It is the story of the worst defeat and humiliation possible. But it is also the story of how God used that defeat to turn the way of this world upside-down. God defeated the power of death and despair upon the very wood of Jesus’ cross. God used the weakness of Christ to defeat the powers of this world.

And we can tell the story of an empty tomb – a story not of confusion or of despair as the women thought at first, but a story of life taking the victory in the face of death.

These are the stories that we can tell. And they are stories that can fire people’s imaginations and make their hearts burn within them. These are the stories we can tell because of Easter.

So, the next time you run into people who are arguing or fighting because they disagree about information, or who are filled with sorrow because of what they see in the world, how about you don’t try to give them any new information. Tell them a story – tell them the story. It is the most powerful thing you can do.

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