Post-Rising: The Big Story - Christian Lindbeck

After and before:
Jesus is the axis
around which history
spins.

As the desert pause
began His work,
so He pauses again,
post-rising,
before emptying out
the flood of His essence - 
an oasis
called Pentecost -
whose torrents would
gather up multi-colored
multitudes and channel them
onward and over
centuries and millenia
to ultimately
wash up at the feet
of a Lover-God.

Post-rising -
that climactic moment,
orchestrated by a 
people-adoring deity
who threaded His only Son
through the needle
of Death
for us,
His beloved.
As any lover,
He longs for us,
to be with us,
to rescue us,
to prove Himself,
to draw us
ever closer:
one flesh pressed
breast to breast,
breathing as one.

Inhalation - 
inspiration:
the drawing in 
of something outside
of self.
Animation -
giving life to dead flesh.
The Holy Spirit
writhes and seeps
through blood vessels
and bone cells,
parceled out to
a quadrillionth infinitude.
The same power
that spun a universe
confounding in magnitude
resides
in me.

Post-rising,
Jesus re-morphed
to become the 
Fatherson One,

who disseminated
the third One;
strewn liberally,
prodigally,
to take up life 
in those who love
this baffling 
Trinity.

Post-rising,
we, thus inspired,
work to walk like
our Lover-God:
to catch the light
and bounce it -
blinding some,
enticing more.
We acknowledge
brokenness
and lament it;
we seek to right
wrongs - even
and especially those
done in Christ's name;
we give voice
to the oppressed
and speak truth
to power;
we find needs
and meet them
without judgement
or shame;
we come again
and again to 
our Source
for refilling
since we are holey
holy ones
and nothing but
dry bones without
Your breath in us.

Post-rising,
we need to wonder,
what holds us back
and hinders this work?
What fakes us out
and tugs us from the path?
And how can we - 
how can I -
get closer to my Lover-God,
to breathe His breath -
in and out -
to the rhythm of 
His heart?
To listen,
rapt and humble
to His besotted
whisperings?

Acts 2; Gen. 1; John 1; Rev. 22

John 16:7; 1 Cor. 6:19; 2 Cor. 5:8