Week of Easter
April 14, 2026
Giving Freely
Let Go of Your Old Life
Acts 4:32-37 | John
3:7b-15
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Today’s
Readings
Acts
4:32-37 The
community of believers was of one heart and one mind. No one claimed that any
of their possessions were their own, but they had everything in common. There
was no one needy among them because those who owned land or houses would sell
them and bring the proceeds to the apostles for distribution to all according
to need. Joseph, called Barnabas, son of encouragement, sold a field and laid
the money at the apostles' feet.
John
3:7b-15 Jesus
said to Nicodemus, do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born from
above. The wind blows where it wills and you can hear the sound it makes but
you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So, it is with everyone
who is born of the Spirit. Jesus continued, no one has gone up to heaven except
the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the desert so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that
everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
Today's
Thread: Everything held loosely - everything given freely.
The early Church
held nothing back. Barnabas didn't sell his field reluctantly; his very name
meant encouragement, and his action was an act of pure generosity. Meanwhile, Jesus told Nicodemus that the Spirit moves like wind; you can't contain it or
control it or predict where it goes. You just feel it and follow. Both readings
say the same thing in different ways. You can't clutch the old life and embrace
the new one at the same time. Something has to be released.
Living
It Today:
What are you
holding onto too tightly right now, a comfort, a grievance, a plan, a
possession, a version of yourself? Barnabas laid it at the apostles' feet
without fanfare. The Spirit moves freely where it wills. The question today is
whether your hands are open or closed.
Something
to seriously think about today:
An
Audit of a Hidden Life
Look at your life, not the version you present on
Sunday morning, not the one you curate for the people who know your name at
church, but the actual life. The one lived in the quiet hours. The one
that exists in the spaces between the prayers.
If someone were granted full access to your calendar,
your bank account, your search history, your text threads, the words you speak
when you think no one spiritual is listening, what story would those things
tell? Would they tell the story of someone who has been genuinely transformed?
Or would they reveal a person carefully managing two separate identities, one
for God and one for the world they haven't fully left?
This is the uncomfortable truth that many believers
live with but rarely say out loud: we have become skilled at the performance
of surrender without the reality of it.
The Way We Present
Ourselves
Consider something as simple as how we
dress. Modesty isn't a rulebook or a religion in itself; it is a reflection of your
heart. It is a quiet daily decision that says I understand what I carry,
and I will not use it as a weapon. But somewhere along the way, that
conviction got lost for many people, and what replaced it was a comfort with
exposure that the world normalized, and the church was too afraid to address.
This speaks to both men and women. A woman
who comes before God, or into a space where people are trying to seek God,
dressed in a way that leaves nothing to the imagination, is not simply making a
fashion choice. She is, whether she intends to or not, pulling the eyes and the
minds of others somewhere they do not belong in that moment. And a man who
walks in showcasing his body, wearing next to nothing across his chest, flexing
what he has been given as though it is something to be consumed, he is doing
the same thing. The body is not shameful. But the deliberate display
of it in ways designed to attract, to provoke, or to be admired, that is a
different matter entirely.
Here is what we rarely say but must: when
you dress in a way that causes another person to stumble, that is not just
their struggle, it is yours too. Scripture is sobering on this. To be
the source of someone else's temptation, to lead another heart into lust or
distraction or sin, carries real spiritual weight. It does not matter if the
intention was innocent. It does not matter if it is simply what everyone
wears. If you are walking into a place of worship, into the presence of
people who are genuinely fighting to keep their minds and hearts pure, and your
clothing makes that fight harder, that is worth pausing over. That is worth
bringing before God in honesty and asking am I dressing for His glory, or
for my own?
The Way We Talk About
People
Then there is the tongue, perhaps the most revealing
instrument of the inner life.
Do you gossip? Not the dramatic, obvious kind, but the
subtle kind. The "I'm only telling you this so you can pray for
them" kind. The "I'm not one to talk but…" kind. The
whispered conversation in the parking lot after service. The group chat that
would embarrass you if Jesus were added to it.
Do you instigate? Do you quietly plant seeds of
discord and then step back to watch what grows, maintaining your innocence
while the fire spreads? Do you create tension between people, subtly,
strategically, because some part of you feeds on the chaos, on being the one
who knows, on holding power through information?
This is not a minor thing. The Book of Proverbs names "one
who sows discord among brothers" as something the Lord hates,
not dislikes, not frowns upon, hates. And yet this behavior lives
comfortably inside people who tithe, who sing in the choir, who raise their
hands in worship on a Friday night.
The Old Life We Haven't
Buried
But perhaps the deepest question is this one, the one
we avoid the most:
Is there a version of your old self that you have not
actually surrendered?
Not the version you've cleaned up. Not the habits you
broke where people could see you breaking them. But the private ones. The ones
that still have a place at your table. The patterns that were there before the
salvation experience, before the baptism, before the recommitment, are
quietly, stubbornly still there.
Maybe it was a lifestyle that was deeply worldly, even
destructive. Maybe it was relationships that pulled you away from God. Maybe it
was an addiction, a bitterness, an appetite for something that has no place in
the life you've claimed to give over. And rather than laying it at the feet of
Christ, fully, openly, with trembling honesty, you've found a way to manage
it. To keep it small enough that it doesn't feel like a contradiction. To
compartmentalize it so thoroughly that the Sunday version of you and the
Thursday night version of you barely recognize each other.
This is the double life. And it is more common inside
the church than we dare admit.
The Invitation and The
Question
The grace of God is not fragile. It can hold the full
weight of your honesty. It has room for the parts of you that are still a mess,
still clutching, still half in the world and half reaching toward heaven. You
do not have to arrive clean to lay something down. That is the entire point of
the cross, that you bring the broken thing as it is, not as you wish it
were.
But you do have to bring it. You have to stop
hiding it. You have to stop managing the image and start allowing the
transformation.
So here is the question to sit with, not just today,
but in the stillness where you can't perform for anyone:
If God peeled back every layer of the life you've
carefully constructed, every private thought, every hidden habit, every
conversation you hoped no one would repeat, would He find a person who is
genuinely becoming new, or someone still secretly in love with the world they
keep telling everyone they've left behind?
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
