With all the noise in the world, do you hear the voice of God? Your calendar tells you what to do, but do you remember who you are? Being comes before doing. This is a call to put first things first. Return to the Lord with this daily pattern of prayer and devotion. Set aside this time as a sanctuary. Find a space free of distraction and follow this pattern.
Invocation
Make the sign of the cross and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:3) O Lord, my poverty is the place where you meet me with grace. My spirit finds all I need in you. Amen.
Meditation: A Matter of Flesh: Christian Hope and Physical Resurrection in selections from Tim Keller and Denise Levertov
In an excerpt from his book, Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter, published in Christianity Today in April, Tim Keller states that Christian hope is “full” because it is founded upon a belief in both physical and spiritual resurrection. Keller writes:
Other religions are ultimately “spirit-ist” in the sense that they believe matter is unimportant and in the end all that will exist is spirit. Secularism, of course, is materialist in its belief that there is no soul or supernatural reality, that everything has a scientific, physical cause.
Christianity differs from both. It does not merely offer the prospect of a wholly spiritual future in heaven. The resurrection of Jesus, to cite the Greek New Testament, is arrabon, a down payment, and aparche, the firstfruits of a future physical resurrection in which the material world will be renewed. It will be a world where justice dwells, every tear will be wiped away, death and destruction are banished forever, and the wolf will lie down with the lamb; these are lyrical, poetic ways of saying that this world will be mended, made new, liberated from its bondage to death and decay (Rom. 8:18–23).
This is the fullest possible hope. The resurrection of Christ promises us not merely some future consolation for the life we lost but the restoration of the life we lost and infinitely more. It promises the world and life that we have always longed for but never had.
Keller’s assertion that Christian faith is tied to both material and spiritual existence echoes the poem “On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus” by Denise Levertov. The daughter of a Hasidic Jew who became an Anglican priest, Levertov herself converted to Christianity as an older adult after years of exploring religious themes in her work.
On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus
by Denise Levertov
It is for all
‘literalists of the imagination,’
poets or not,
that miracle
is possible and essential.
Are some intricate minds
nourished on concept,
as epiphytes flourish
high in the canopy?
Can they
subsist on the light,
on the half
of metaphor that’s not
grounded in dust, grit,
heavy
carnal clay?
Do signs contain and utter,
for them
all the reality
that they need? Resurrection, for them,
an internal power, but not
a matter of flesh?
For the others,
of whom I am one,
miracles (ultimate need, bread
of life,) are miracles just because
people so tuned
to the humdrum laws:
gravity, mortality-
can’t open
to symbol’s power
unless convinced of its ground,
its roots
in bone and blood.
We must feel
the pulse in the wound
to believe
that ‘with God
all things
are possible,’
taste
bread at Emmaus
that warm hands
broke and blessed.
Benediction
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21)