Devotion

What do you carry in the back of your mind? Psychologists teach that we all carry a wide array of memories and feelings, some of them conscious, others unconscious, in the back of our minds. Children well loved are nurtured by those memories throughout their lives. In turn, people who suffer physical or emotional trauma can carry the wounds and suffer their consequences for decades. What we carry in the back of our minds makes a huge difference in the way that we live now.

This season, we hear the wondrous Good News once more: He is Risen-He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia! We have come to the end of the story and to the beginning of new life. The way to the cross was painful, shameful and tragic. We saw that the wages of sin is death and the dying was by inches. But we boldly proclaim that sin, shame and death are not the final words! Christ Jesus was raised from the dead, vindicated completely and restored to his place in glory. His new life is ours as well. Proclaim this Good News with your lips, but don't forget to tuck it away in the back of your mind with all the other things you've collected there. Let it counter and conquer whatever wound or doubt may still persist.

Luther once wrote: "After a person has contemplated the passion and cross of Christ and has thus become aware of [her] sin and is terrified in [her] heart, [she] must watch that sin does not remain in [her] conscience, for this would lead to sheer despair." Forgiven, we are free to live with a clear conscience and an open future. Because Christ lives, so will we, no matter what. May this sure and certain hope, always in the back of our minds, nurture and sustain us throughout our lives like the fond memory of a parent's love.