Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

Our Pastor

Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

April 1998

Looking For The Risen Christ, In You?

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

Easter is at the heart of our experience of Christ. It is here that God overturned our everyday world and made all things new again. But if Easter stays in the distant past, my life, your lives are not changed. I need to see the risen Christ in our time to have my world made new. Is this also try for you? If it is, where have you seen Easter in your life? Help me look for Easter.

I was visiting my very small God-daughter "Cassie" and her still nervous mom Gabrielle. She is still in that "Is she real?" stage of wonder. She was telling me something St. Paul had mentioned to me earlier that day. St. Paul put it like this, "Christ in you is your hope of glory." Cassie's mom, Gabby, put it this way, "It's strange how I've learned about giving since she came along. She can't advance my career, only slow it down. She costs me time and sleep. I'm always changing diapers and I get nothing back from her in exchange. Except, just recently, the very occasional smile. Though that goes a long way. There must be something of Christ in us that enables us to do this. To give so much. It's funny but I don't mind. I only mind when she hurts. When I can't make it better (like this cold). She trusts me, I want to make it better and when I can't. Then I mind." She has found the Christ in us, that enables us to give, to live out sacrificial love. In this, the Christ in us, I see Easter breaking through. That risen Christ lives in us today, the spark of Divine life trying to ignite our love.

One of my favorite quotes from seminary days was from the early Quaker mystic Matthew Fox. It goes something like this "Walk lightly upon the earth, answering that of God in everyone." I can feel Christ in my brothers and sisters in God, when I stop for a moment to look.

My brother Mark lives in Orlando Florida and this March they got the strongest tornadoes ever recorded in Florida. In the midst of the 6 inches of rain they got, Mark was out, doing his job, delivering Pizza Hut pizzas. The rain was so heavy that people, especially foreign tourists, were stopping right on the road. They couldn't see the road and there were no shoulders. Mark knows those roads so well he can literally drive them with no light at all. He would come up beside frightened tourists and started clicking his Pizza Hut light on and off till he got their attention and then they would pull in behind him like little ducks and he would lead them to high ground and a place to pull off. He said he got a little worried when the car started bumping up and down from the wind, but he couldn't leave them stranded on the road; "they could have gotten hurt. Besides, they were guests in our country and I was always taught to you take care of guests, (remember Abraham entertaining Angelic guests in his tent?) It was no big deal, I knew where the road was and they didn't." But he was wrong. Acts of love great or small are "big deals". This is the Risen Christ come down from the cross building his father's kingdom in the world with your hands and mine.

Lift up the Christ within you and let all the world see that we are Easter People.

Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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