Friction Formed (Romans 5:1-5)

The road to healing, strength, and peace is not a smooth digital superhighway spanning the universe. It's a river that grinds away our rough edges so that we can embody the other-oriented love of God. The world tells us that the best life is one of comfort and ease, one without struggle, one that is padded and comfortable.  But that’s a lie.  The best life is the one that Jesus lived in the real world. And the real world is full of friction. It’s one full of difficulty and injustice. Jesus could have cheat-coded his way through this life and didn’t. He didn’t opt out of painful things, and he followed the way set before him all the way to the cross. And there, he shows us what it means to be deeply human.