Interpretive Exercise

Over 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year. Over fifty percent of couples who are married in the United States will end up divorced. Violence permeates our culture; Virginia Tech… Columbine High School… Iraq. Natural disasters ravage our land; Hurricane Katrina…Floods…Earthquakes…Tornados. We are left homeless, hungry, humiliated. To top it all off, the church is in decline. Millions are leaving the church each year. “God is Dead?....”

If this is the way it is to be, why do I live?

On Sunday morning I get to see God in the eyes of a newborn baby being baptized. I see a new marriage take place in the church; a promise made that Christ is and will always be present. I see that promise in the face of a couple now married for 50 years. I see the Spirit at work in the faces of people coming together to pray for the families of those touched by violence; people who don’t even know each other hugging, and holding hands. I see the church reaching out in mission to house the homeless, to clothe the cold, and Christ is present in the eyes of the hungry woman who brings her child into the soup kitchen. On Sunday I feel God presence as I eat the bread, and drink the cup; the cross hangs empty on the wall. Why do I live? I live because Christ Lives!