Our Beautiful, Terrible World

 

Check out what's going on at Second Pres!  Read along with Matthew 17:1-9. 

 

Sermon excerpt: 

Today, Jesus says to us, “Here is the world. Beautiful things will happen here”—beautiful things that will make us, like the disciples, want to pitch our tents on the mountaintop and cling to the moments of glory that occasionally shine into our lives. But we can’t stay there. Eventually Jesus and the disciples came down off the mountain and returned to everyday life and entered into the suffering of the people around them.

Jesus says to us, “Here is the world. Terrible things will happen too—humiliation, persecution, crucifixion.”

And we can’t have the one without the other. Joy is sweeter once we have tasted the depths of sorrow. And sorrow is not quite so bitter when we know the sweetness of joy.