Blessed be God who animates our lives and in the midst of chaos, offers us opportunities to testify to God’s great and good grace and in so doing save our souls.AMEN I struggled with today’s Gospel, especially struggling to find a message consistent with the beautiful opportunity to baptize dear Caleb! Fact of the matter is after reading the first 2/3 of Luke’s account I thought about punting to the prophet Isaiah and images of new earth, new heaven….now that is consistent with new life and baptism…right?   That, however, felt like cherry picking and ignoring context. I believe God intends for us to wrestle and be uncomfortable even on the most glorious of days. To come through the struggle; even scathed can be deeply meaningful and even liberating ultimately. And so I tried and tried again. I let the account of destruction, persecution and insurrection sink into my bones and realized how timely   the news of death and destruction indeed might be in contemporary terms. ...