Dear Beloved Friends,

Every year Union ends our Easter worship with U2’s Window in the Skies with the resounding chorus: Oh, can’t you see what love has done…what it’s doing to me!

We’ve walked in Lent together in this challenging time -- grieving the physical distance, hoping for a new day of being together, praying for Jesus’ peace for the world, anticipating new life, and lamenting the reality of the hate that still grips our world. In all of this we walk in hope that Jesus is who He says – God in flesh and the image of the God who loves. We walk through Lent together with our eyes to our Savior of LOVE, who goes to the cross for the sake of all of us. The ground at the cross is level. We are all in need of Jesus’ love.

In John 13:1 we read of the extent of Jesus’ love for us.

“Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

On Palm Sunday we begin Jesus’ journey of love through the cross to the good news of RESURRECTION. This is a journey of utter, self-sacrificial love! Jesus topples authorities – not through aggression, force, manipulation, coercion but through LOVE. Jesus overcomes the hold of evil’s power through LOVE. God’s Self-giving on the cross opens a new reality for us, a peace with God that frees us to live open-handed, expansively, and unleashes the Spirit to live within and through us. Oh, can’t you see what love has done…what it’s doing to me—and us?!

We invite you to take time each day of Holy Week to ask:

How does Jesus love make a difference?
How/where does Jesus invite you to love as Jesus loves?

Allow yourself to walk through this week and to pause with Jesus and to give thanks for the love that changes the world and changes your life. You are loved to the end. What can love do through you? Our world is desperate for the the love of Christ that flows through you.