Life as Investment

I’ve really enjoyed our recent conversations about the end of time, the return of Christ and the kingdom. We said from the beginning that our intention was not to create a new system, or to crack some sort of code in our understanding. Our intention was to consider how our beliefs may affect our ability to follow our God, and to pray that through our conversations the Spirit would show us how we can be more faithful.

Sunday we asked, “How then shall we live?” As people who hope for the coming kingdom in its fullness and as people who are called to follow it, how do we live? Is there a way for us to engage both our need to be fully present to where we are and to hold a future hope for what will be?

I think Lindsay used the best metaphor when she talked about investing. As in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, we wonder what it would mean for us to be people who invested wisely. For those of us following the way of Jesus, investment in people, in creation, through our desire to see God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done in and through and among us, is our highest calling.

How do our lives beckon us to invest in grace? Invest in God’s justice? Invest in healing, or forgiveness, or love? If we take seriously the responsibility- and great joy- of living as God’s hands and feet in the world in every way possible, how then shall we live?

Perhaps these questions are fruitful ways for us to prepare our hearts for Lent. What ought we give up, or take up, as we enter this season of ashes?