When have you been like Joseph’s brothers and fallen to group think or turned a blind eye to protect your own privilege at the expense of another?

Through this process of transformation, we shed the distractions, the addictions, and all that seeks to separate us from God.

And if we do find ourselves, like Esau, in positions of privilege, in positions of power, benefitting from the entitlements of our society, which is not an inherently bad place to be, but if we do find ourselves like Esau, will you perhaps share from your abundance?

And when, with this community of faith surrounding us, we do finally recognize God’s leading, may we, like Rebekah, respond eagerly “we will go.”

Something changes between Abraham and God that day. Abraham learns to trust and fear God. And God proves that God can be trusted.

Reconciliation is the pathway towards restoration, and the restoration of creation is at the heart of the mission of God.

Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?

No way…we are proof. I am proof. This, right here, right now, is proof in the wondrous depths of God.

The choice that we have to make is this: when we feel God’s tug on our hearts will we let go and follow? What is God calling you to?

All of these experiences of God are summed up in the doctrine of God as a Trinity of Persons, which is the church’s trying to make sense of our ongoing experience of God with us, past and present and future.

“See what love the Father has given us,” exclaims the author of I John, “that we should be called the children of God. And that is what we are!”

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

“There is nothing – in the heavens or on the earth or under the earth – no person, no organization, no circumstance – that can separate us from the love of God in Christ.”

So it is for us, when we find ourselves in the disciples shoes; when we find ourselves in a liminal space, an in-between period of our lives, take heart, though we may not see him, Jesus is with us.

‘After my sheep are in the fold, I will lay my body across the opening. No sheep will step over me and no wolf can get in without getting past me first.’ ‘Those who enter by me will be saved.’

We too are on the journey to Emmaus. We are all searching and hoping and praying for things to change in our lives.

Someone has said that “faith is a series of doubts vanquished by love.” Jesus is dying to love you. And he has come back to life to assure you of the same.

Because God has raised Jesus to life, we can now have a new relationship of intimacy with God. Because Jesus has forgiven our sins on the cross, we can now know our holy God and call him Abba, Father.

Two processions entered into Jerusalem today. One representing Caesar and the machine of war; the other representing the Prince of Peace. One representing the palm branch of power and one representing the olive branch of peace. The question we must ask ourselves today is what procession am I in? Am I metaphorically carrying an olive branch or a palm branch?