Mike Paschall . com

Such a way of discerning the sovereign power of his gracious compassion leads directly to the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate energizing for the new future. The wrenching of Friday had left only the despair of Saturday (Luke 24:21) and there was no reason to expect Sunday after that Friday. There is not any way to explain the resurrection out of the previously existing reality. The resurrection can only be received and affirmed and celebrated as the new action of God whose province it is to create new futures for people and to let them be amazed in the midst of despair… The resurrection of Jesus is not to be understood in good liberal fashion as a spiritual development in the church. Nor should it be too quickly handled as an oddity in the history of God or as an isolated act of God’s power. Rather, it is the ultimate act of prophetic energizing in which a new history is initiated. It is a new history open to all but peculiarly received by the marginal victims of the old order.

—From The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann

“(Resurrection)… it is the ultimate act of prophetic energizing in which a new history is initiated.”

This isn’t a conversation about election. This is pointing to the fact we’ve all been graciously invited to partake of the new covenant… the new kingdom… a kingdom humming in existence NOW! But there is something we have to grasp in the depths of our hearts… new means “new” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)! The old order did its job—it helped create our thirsty need for grace! The table is now lavishly set. All we have to do is receive and partake. That’s activates the bubbling fountain of the Spirit within us! (John 4:14) —MDP

LOVE WINS… EVEN WHEN IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE IT.