Last night, we continued our journey through the season of Easter and the final movement of the Spiritual Exercises. We reflected on the life Jesus said he came to bring in John 10:10. This life in the kingdom of God is the life we long for in the deepest place of our souls. It is the life we were created to live. And the good news, the gospel, is that it is available to us now. Jesus came to bring abundant life, and this life begins today. That is good news isn’t it?
Jesus teaches us that eternal, abundant life is knowing God (John 17:3), bringing our whole selves into an interactive relationship with him. Last week, Jonathan reminded us we are more than our reason. We have bodies, but we are not just physical beings. We have hearts. But we are not just our emotions. We have heads.
We are whole beings, and in the Gospel accounts of the disciples meeting the resurrected Christ, we see Jesus caring for their heads as he opens the scriptures. He attends to their hearts as he engages their emotions, and he ministers to their bodies as he invites them to touch and see.
This led us into a practice of imaginative prayer where we joined the disciples on the road to Emmaus and opened our whole selves, heads, hearts, and bodies to the presence of Jesus.
Kingdom Practices
This week, let’s spend our time resting in the Gospel stories of the resurrected Christ. As we do so, let’s reflect on how God might be inviting us to open ourselves more fully to the loving presence of our Lord.