hope to love: a benediction of sorts

Today may we be inspired by God's compassion, disrupted by Christ's unrelenting grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and so captivated by resurrection hope that we cannot help but live a life of unflinching and uncompromising love... even for our enemies... that we may truly be people of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. May we lay down our arms, dismantle our defenses and surrender ourselves to hope. Let us not be so distracted by the laws and systems of our present brokenness that we cannot see God's future, Christ's future, the resurrection inhabiting our present. The Kingdom of God is here! The new creation has been inaugurated with the reign of its crucified king. So today, may we hope to love and may the people of God be a silly people - silly enough and foolish enough to live according to the wisdom of realism - to live according to the odd realism of resurrection hope, to be people of unrestricted and nondiscriminatory love.