Wounds That Heal

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19 For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. 20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” 25 For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2: 19-25 NIV)

I had two needed operations when I was five. One was to remove my tonsils, the other more private, think religious ritual of an ancient sect. That was until I had a torn tendon mended and that was a major surgery, the wound of which all these months later still hurts. I end my therapy in a couple of weeks but I feel miles from where I'd like to be. My therapy reminds me twice weekly of that pain. The wound on the surface has healed, but inside the surgical cut still smarts. I have faith in God that one day it will go away. My doctor will attest that I am not a fan of any sort of suffering. Not so our Lord, who prophecies of old foretold of all that He would suffer on our behalf. Let me add that I saw the movie The Passion of the Christ, with no desire to ever see it again for its reality hurt me just to see it and to feel within me of what Jesus suffered for me. And you.

Peter is writing to people who know what it is to suffer for doing nothing wrong. His original audience were servants — household workers with little legal standing, subject to the moods and cruelties of masters who were under no particular obligation to be fair. And Peter does not pretend their suffering isn’t real, or that they should simply endure it without noticing. He names it plainly: unjust suffering is painful. It stings precisely because it is undeserved.

But Peter will not let suffering have the last interpretive word. He sets it inside a larger frame: Christ suffered for you. Those three words change everything. They do not explain away the pain or make the injustice disappear. What they do is ensure that unjust suffering is never meaningless for the person who follows Jesus. It has a context. It has a companion. It has a destination.

The Easter season is the right time to sit with this. Good Friday tells us that the Son of God was subjected to the most grotesque injustice in human history — perfect innocence condemned, love itself tortured and killed. And Easter Sunday tells us that God did not let that injustice stand as the final word. The resurrection is God’s ultimate verdict: suffering borne in faithfulness is not wasted, not forgotten, and not permanent.

Peter draws a portrait of Jesus in suffering that is almost unbearably specific. He committed no sin. No deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled insults, He did not retaliate. When He suffered, He made no threats. Each detail is a quiet rebuke to every natural human instinct toward self-defense, score-keeping, and retaliation. Jesus, in His passion, was the most fully human person who ever lived — and He chose, at every possible juncture, the path of non-retaliation.

Peter calls this an “example” — a word that in the original Greek carries the image of a writing tablet used to teach children to form letters. They trace over the master’s hand until the shape becomes their own. We are invited to trace the life of Christ until His responses begin to feel more natural in us than our own defensive reflexes. This is not passive resignation. It is an active, costly, deeply counter-cultural choice made possible only by the resurrection — because only a person who believes that God will ultimately set things right can afford to release the compulsion to defend themselves at every turn.

The key phrase is this: “he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” Jesus did not relinquish justice — He relocated it. He placed it in the hands of the One whose judgments are not distorted by power or politics or fear. The risen Christ is the proof that this trust was not misplaced. God vindicated Him. God will vindicate those who follow in His steps.

Peter reaches back to Isaiah 53 with one of the most stunning sentences in the New Testament: “by his wounds you have been healed.” The grammar deserves attention. It is past tense — not “will be healed” or “might be healed,” but have been healed. The healing is accomplished. It was completed at the cross and confirmed at the empty tomb. We do not wait for healing to become available. We receive what has already been secured.

And yet the wounds remain visible. The risen Christ, appearing to His disciples after Easter, still bore the marks of the nails. Thomas was invited to touch them. The resurrection did not erase the wounds of the cross — it transformed them. What had been the marks of defeat became the seals of victory, the credentials of the one who had been to death and back, the visible proof that suffering borne in faithfulness becomes, in God’s hands, the very instrument of healing.

This is the deepest mystery and the greatest hope of the Easter faith. The wounds that the world inflicts do not have to define us or defeat us. In the hands of the God who raises the dead, they can become the very places through which His light shines most clearly. The crack in the vessel, as the old image goes, is where the light gets out. Your suffering, your scars, your unhealed places — none of them are beyond the reach of the One who heals by bearing wounds Himself.

Peter ends this passage with one of the most tender images in all of Scripture: “For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” The past tense — “you were” — is quietly triumphant. That is who you used to be. A sheep without direction, wandering toward whatever looked appealing in the moment, drifting further and further from the fold without fully realizing it.

But now you have returned. The Greek word carries the sense of turning back, of reorientation, of a journey reversed. And notice who made this return possible: not the sheep, but the Shepherd. The whole of this passage has been building to this point. Christ suffered for you. He bore your sins in His body on the cross. He died so that you might die to sins and live for righteousness. The return home was purchased at the cross and opened at the resurrection. We did not find our way back. We were found.

The word “Overseer” — the one who watches over, who superintends — is the other side of the Shepherd’s care. He does not merely rescue the lost sheep and then leave it to fend for itself. He watches over the soul. He attends to the inner life, the deep place where the real battles are fought and the real wounds are held. The risen Christ is not only the Shepherd who leads — He is the Overseer who stays. He does not leave us to manage our souls alone. Easter means that the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep is alive and watching over them still.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, Shepherd and Overseer of our souls, We confess that we know what it is to stray — to wander from Your voice, to follow our own instincts into places that looked like pasture and turned out to be wilderness. We thank You that You did not wait for us to find our way back. You came for us. You bore in Your body what we deserved. You entrusted Yourself to the Father’s justice so that we might be covered by His mercy. Where we are suffering unjustly, give us the grace to entrust ourselves to the One who judges justly, as You did. Where we are carrying wounds we have not yet allowed You to touch, let the truth of Your own wounded and risen body speak healing into those hidden places. Teach us to follow in Your steps — not the steps of retaliation or self-protection, but the steps of One who knew that love borne faithfully through suffering is the most powerful force in the universe. Keep watching over our souls. We are glad to be home. Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Is there a place in your life where you are carrying an unjust wound — something done to you that was wrong, and that you have been quietly rehearsing in the courtroom of your own heart? This week, take that specific wound to the Shepherd in prayer and practice the act of entrusting it to the One who judges justly. You are not releasing the wrongdoer from accountability. You are releasing yourself from the exhausting work of being your own judge and jury. The Overseer of your soul can be trusted with what you have been carrying alone.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God, and you matter to me! By His wounds you have been healed. You were straying. Now you are home.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The Voice That Calls You By Name

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1 "Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. 7 So again Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10: 1-10 NRSV)

I was blessed to grow up in a different time and place. I was born in Kingsville, Texas, during the days when most moms and dads allowed their children to roam freely outside. There was a command I yearned to hear, "¡Salganse pa' fuera!" which is "Go (play) outside!" And having a best friend named Alex, whose mom also gave that command, and Alex having a bike like me, we could ride almost anywhere in the city limits of Kingsville, and we did. My legs in those days did not yet "kill" me with every mile I tried to pedal; I could ride for hours and it would not bother me. And to this day I believe that anywhere within the city limits of some 26,000 residents of Kingsville, if Mom so yelled my name, I would know it was her and it was me that was being summoned home. Something about her voice that I knew was for me.

In a culture where shepherding was a way of life, Jesus speaks to crowds who knew exactly what He was saying. They knew that Jesus knew, that a good shepherd leads, or goes ahead of, his sheep. It is he who can open and close the sheep gate or if there is a gatekeeper, the gatekeeper opens the gate for him. The key is that the sheep know the voice of the shepherd and when they hear his voice, they know it is he whom they are following and not some other person, especially not a thief who may have come to steal some sheep. The good shepherd knows the name of each lamb and so when they hear their name and in the voice of their shepherd they know they are in good hands and in the company of he who leads them and provides all they need for their own good. Sheep are smart enough not to follow a stranger but will in fact, run from a stranger.

There is a detail in this passage that becomes electrifying when read through the lens of Easter: the shepherd goes ahead of the sheep. He does not drive them from behind. He does not manage them from a distance. He leads them out of the fold and then walks on before them, and they follow because they know the one whose footprints they are stepping into.

This is exactly what Jesus did at Easter. He went ahead. He entered death before us — not because He had to, but because He was leading. He walked into the darkest place a human being can go and He came out the other side, and He did it first, so that every one of His sheep could know: the Shepherd has already been where we are afraid to go. The path through death is not unwalked. There are footprints ahead of us, and they belong to the risen Christ.

Whatever terrain you are facing in this season — illness, grief, uncertainty, exhaustion, a future that feels more frightening than hopeful — the Easter proclamation is that your Shepherd has gone on ahead. He is not watching from safety while you struggle. He has already been there. Follow the voice. Follow the footprints. He knows the way through.

John’s Gospel is careful with its details, and this one deserves to be lingered over: the shepherd “calls his own sheep by name.” Not by category. Not by number. Not by general summons broadcast over the whole flock. By name. Your name. The name that belongs to you alone, the name that carries the whole weight of your particular history, your particular struggles, your particular hopes.

There is a moment in the Easter story that perfectly illustrates this. On the morning of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene stands outside the empty tomb weeping, and a figure she takes for the gardener asks her why she is weeping. She does not recognize Him. And then He says one word: “Mary.” Just her name. And she knows. Not because of an argument or a proof. Because He called her by name, and she recognized the voice of the one who knew her.

The risen Shepherd knows your name with the same specificity. You are not anonymous to God. You are not lost in the crowd of human history, one more anonymous soul among billions. You are known — named, called, led. In a world that so often reduces us to data points or demographic categories, the Easter gospel insists on something radical: the God of the universe knows your name and has called it.

We live in a world absolutely saturated with voices. Every hour of every day, voices compete for our attention, our allegiance, our sense of self. Some of those voices are subtle. They do not announce themselves as thieves. They speak the language of comfort, of comparison, of fear, of ambition — and they lead us, quietly and incrementally, away from the pasture and toward the kind of exhausted, depleted living that looks nothing like the abundant life Jesus describes.

The Easter season is a gift precisely here. It invites us to return — to the Word, to prayer, to worship, to the community of faith — and to re-tune our hearing to the Shepherd’s frequency. The more time we spend near Jesus, the more quickly we recognize when a voice is leading us somewhere He would not go. Discernment is not a spiritual gift reserved for a few. It is the natural result of a sheep who has spent enough time near the Shepherd to know the sound of His voice.

When Jesus shifts the metaphor and declares “I am the gate,” He is not narrowing the picture — He is clarifying the architecture of salvation. A gate is the threshold between danger and safety, between exposure and shelter, between wandering and home. And Jesus says: I am that threshold. Whoever passes through me will be saved. They will come in and go out and find pasture.

Notice the freedom embedded in that phrase: “come in and go out.” The sheep are not locked inside. They are not imprisoned in the fold. The gate opens both ways — inward to shelter and rest, outward to pasture and mission. The Christian life is not a retreat from the world into safe religious enclosure. It is a rhythmic movement between gathering and sending, between being fed and going out to serve. The risen Christ is the gate for both movements.

And then the declaration that gathers everything together: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” This is the Easter sentence. The thief — death, sin, fear, the powers of this age — came to steal and kill and destroy. And for a time, on Good Friday, it looked as though the thief had won. But Easter morning is God’s final, decisive, unanswerable word: the thief does not get the last say. The Shepherd does. And what He says is life. Abundant life. Life that overflows its banks, that cannot be contained by a sealed tomb or a rolled stone or the worst that human cruelty and cosmic darkness can devise.

This abundant life is not a promise for some distant future alone — it begins now, in the present tense, in the ordinary Tuesday of your week and the quiet morning of your prayers. Every moment lived in the knowledge that the Shepherd has gone ahead, that He knows your name, that His voice is trustworthy and His gate is open — that is abundant life taking root. Easter has already happened. The life has already been given. The only question left is whether we will receive it.

PRAYER: Good Shepherd, risen Lord, We confess how easily we are drawn away by unfamiliar voices — voices that promise much and deliver depletion, voices that speak our fears back to us and call it wisdom, voices that lead us away from pasture and toward exhaustion. Forgive us for the times we have followed the wrong sound. Remind us that You have gone ahead — through suffering, through death, through the sealed and silent tomb — and that Your resurrection is the guarantee that You know the way through every darkness we will ever face. Call us by name today, the way You called Mary in the garden. Let us recognize You and follow. Open the gate of abundant life wider in us than we have yet allowed. May we come in and go out through You — rested in Your shelter, sent out to Your pasture, always and only following the voice we have come to love. In Your risen and life-giving name. Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: This week, take one deliberate step toward learning the Shepherd’s voice more deeply. Set aside fifteen minutes each morning to read slowly in John’s Gospel — not for information, but for familiarity. Listen for the voice beneath the words. Pay attention to what stirs in you, what convicts you, what comforts you. The sheep follow because they know the voice. Knowing takes time. Give it the time it deserves.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

The Sermon That Started It All

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14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: 36 “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” 37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” 40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. (Acts 2: 14a, 36-41 NIV)

Every pastor at one time or another has secretly or not so secretly wished that one of his/her sermons would reach 3,000 who would be "added to their number that day." Maybe some even wish they could preach to a crowd of that size. But keep in mind this is not a competition. We compete not against other preachers but against the enemy of preachers. But among my friends whenever they call to check on me after I preach at some new place, "Did you convert 3,000 with your sermon?" Or I ask them.

Not many weeks earlier, this same Peter had stood in a courtyard by a charcoal fire and denied three times that he even knew Jesus. He had cursed and sworn and slipped away into the shadows. But now, on the morning of Pentecost, something has happened to him. He stands up. He raises his voice. He addresses a crowd of thousands in the very city where his Lord was executed.

This is what resurrection does to a person. The same power that rolled away the stone, that transformed a borrowed tomb into the most important empty room in history, has transformed Peter. He is not managing his shame. He is not offering a carefully hedged theological position. He is making a declaration: the Jesus you crucified is Lord and Messiah. Full stop.

The Easter season invites us to ask the same question the resurrection asked of Peter: Has the risen Christ changed me? Not just what I believe, but who I am — my courage, my willingness to stand up, my readiness to speak? The resurrection is not merely a doctrine to affirm. It is a power to receive.

Peter’s message is startling in its directness. He does not soften the central claim or bury it in qualifications. He says: God has made the Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah. The word “you” lands like a stone in still water. Many in the crowd had been in Jerusalem during Passover. Some had perhaps cried out for Barabbas. Others had simply stood by in silence. None of them could claim to be entirely uninvolved in what had happened to Jesus.

But here is the grace hidden in that accusation: Peter is not addressing enemies. He calls them “brothers.” He is speaking to people who are, in that moment, reachable. The same hands that were raised against Jesus can be opened to receive Him. This is the scandal of Easter grace — that the gospel is preached first to those who crucified the Christ, and three thousand of them say yes.

We are all, in one way or another, in that crowd. We have all turned away, denied, been complicit in the small crucifixions of everyday life — the lies we told, the kindness we withheld, the idol we chose over the living God. And yet the sermon is preached to us, too. The question “what shall we do?” is ours to ask.

The crowd’s response is one of the most remarkable phrases in the New Testament: “they were cut to the heart.” The Greek word carries the image of something sharp and sudden — a piercing, a puncturing. The truth of the resurrection, proclaimed with clarity and boldness, did something to them that no amount of philosophical argument or emotional manipulation could do. It broke through.

This is always how genuine conviction works. It is not manufactured by clever technique or worked up by atmospheric pressure. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, using the proclaimed Word to reach places in the human heart that nothing else can access. Peter did not cut them to the heart. The truth about the risen Christ did. Peter simply had the courage to say it out loud.

Have you ever been cut to the heart by the gospel? Can you remember the moment when the resurrection stopped being a theological proposition and became a personal confrontation — when the question “what shall we do?” became your own? If you have, let this season renew the memory. If you haven’t, let this be your Pentecost.

Peter’s answer to the crowd’s urgent question is wonderfully simple: repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Three movements, each flowing into the next. Repentance is the turning — away from the old life, the futile ways, the self-constructed kingdoms. Baptism is the public declaration — I belong to the crucified and risen Jesus, and I am not ashamed. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is what makes all of this sustainable: not our own willpower or religious effort, but the very presence and power of God living within us.

And then Peter widens the lens to an astonishing breadth: “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Far off. That phrase would have echoed in the ears of every Gentile who heard it later, every person who felt themselves on the outside of God’s story. The resurrection has no borders. The Spirit has no favorites. The call goes out to the near and the far, the young and the old, those who feel worthy and those who are quite sure they are not.

Three thousand people said yes that day. Not because Peter was a brilliant orator. Not because the conditions were perfect. But because the risen Christ was real, the Spirit was moving, and the Word went forth with power. That same risen Christ is real today. That same Spirit is moving. The Word has not lost its edge.

PRAYER: Loving God, thank you for those first sermons that touch people for the first time or convict for the first time. Thank you for the men and women who have responded to preaching and reaching us. Help us to know we have a "pulpit" from which we too, can "preach" the love fo Jesus to all; in His name we pray, amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one person in your life who is “far off” — far from faith, far from hope, or simply far from community — and take one deliberate step toward them. It doesn’t have to be a sermon. It might be a conversation, an invitation, a meal, or simply the courage to tell them what the risen Christ has meant to you.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Strangers From Another Land

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17 If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. 18 You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. 20 He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. 21 Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. 22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. 23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. (1 Peter 1: 17-23 NRSV)

In 1975 I left the safety of home and hearth to move to Denver, Colorado to resume my seminary education. I had dropped out of SMU's Perkins School of Theology, worked for Ma Bell, and took advantage of the United Methodist Church's Crusade Scholarship and Iliff's School of Theology's invitation to keep studying to become a minister. I have to stress that 1975 Denver was not the Denver of today. I have to confess I had never lived outside of Texas and Colorado being a state park of Texas (so so Texans used to say to taunt and torment the two native Coloradans that lived there, I felt there might be enough Texans up there to help make me feel at home. I was wrong. Let's start with God's gift to humanity, Mexican food. The old chain El Chico's was the only restaurant that said it sold Mexican food. My having been exposed to it I tried my chances at another "Mexican" place and when I was seated, the server brought me a bowl of Fritos and a tiny bowl of ketchup. I kid you not. And it got worse. I don't have to say there were no HEB Grocery Stores, and there were no Spanish language UM churches. In many ways I was truly a stronger in a strange land. In some ways I truly was an exile from Texas.

Peter wrote this letter to the exiles of his time. The believers in Jesus had been scattered across the ancient world and so Peter writes to them. They are strangers, pilgrims, people who don’t quite fit. And in the middle of the Easter season — that stretch of glorious days between resurrection and Pentecost — Peter reminds us that this sense of not-quite-belonging is not a problem to be solved. It is the shape of the Christian life.

Because of the resurrection, our citizenship has shifted. We now belong to a kingdom that is not yet fully visible. We live, as the ancient phrase goes, in the world but not of it. Peter’s instruction to “live in reverent fear during the time of your exile” is not a call to anxiety. It is a call to awareness — to remember who you are, who you belong to, and how costly that belonging was.

Peter could have stopped at gratitude. He could have simply said, “You have been set free — rejoice!” But he is more precise than that. He names what we were ransomed from: “the futile ways inherited from your ancestors.” The word futile here is heavy. It is the same emptiness that the Preacher names in Ecclesiastes — vanity, vapor, a chasing after wind. Without the resurrection, all our striving, all our building, all our grasping amounts to exactly that.

And the price paid for our release? Not silver or gold — the currencies that drive so much of human life — but “the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.” Peter reaches back to the Passover imagery every Jewish reader would instantly recognize: the unblemished lamb, the blood on the doorpost, the night of deliverance. Jesus is that Lamb. The cross is that doorpost. And Easter morning is God’s declaration that the ransom has been accepted.

This is why Peter can say that Christ “was destined before the foundation of the world.” The resurrection did not catch heaven by surprise. The empty tomb was not Plan B. From before creation, the Lamb was appointed, the price was purposed, and your freedom was planned.

Easter reorients everything, including where we place our hope. Peter says that through Christ, God “raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” Notice the direction of this sentence. The resurrection is not primarily about our feelings of comfort or our theological categories. It is about the reorientation of the whole self — faith and hope, grounded not in circumstances, not in human systems, but in the God who raises the dead.

To set your hope on God is to live with a kind of stubborn confidence that refuses to be finally undone by grief, failure, or death. The disciples on Easter morning had to learn this. So did Peter himself — a man who had denied Christ three times and still found himself writing letters about the glorious hope of the resurrection. If the risen Lord could restore Peter’s hope, He can restore yours.

Peter’s letter arrives at its most pastoral moment in verses 22 and 23. All the theology of ransom and resurrection, of exile and hope, flows toward a single imperative: “love one another deeply from the heart.” The Greek word translated “deeply” carries the sense of something strained to its full capacity, stretched out, extended beyond comfort. Not polite affection. Not surface-level cordiality. Earnest, effortful, costly love.

This is possible, Peter says, because we have been “born anew” — not from perishable seed but from the living and enduring word of God. The same resurrection power that emptied the tomb has planted something imperishable in us. We are new creatures. And new creatures, shaped by Easter, love differently than the world does.

The world loves transactionally — giving in order to receive, relating in order to gain. But the ransomed people of God love because they have been loved at infinite cost. We love from the overflow of a grace we did not earn and could not purchase. Easter gives us both the reason and the power to love one another as the risen Christ has loved us.

PRAYER: Risen Lord, You ransomed us at a price beyond reckoning. Turn our eyes from futile things to the imperishable hope of the resurrection. Remind us today that we are exiles with a destination — and give us grace to love one another deeply while we walk the road home. In Your strong name we pray, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: This week, identify one person in your life who needs the kind of deep, earnest love Peter describes. Reach out to them in a concrete way — a note, a visit, a meal, a phone call — not because they have earned it, but because you have been ransomed to love.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! You have been born anew. Now go and love like it.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

Walking with Jesus With Eyes Wide Open

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13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him. 17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”They stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” 19 “What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.” 25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. 28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” 33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” 35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. (Luke 24:13-35 NIV)

Some years ago, I received a call from the conference office that they needed Nellie and me to go to Nashville for a clergy couple meeting at the General Board of Discipleship. We were blessed to sit through a series of teachings by The Rev. Dr. Maxie Dunnam, whom, at the time unbeknownst to us, was working on the finishing touches on a four-day leadership retreat called The Walk to Emmaus. Maxie had brokered a deal with The Catholic Church to pay the rights to a Methodist version of the Catholic Cursillo, a wonderful retreat started by Catholics who wanted to know more about the love and work of God. The word cursillo from Spanish, for the retreat had its origins in España, means little course or short course. We also heard from others who were part of that foundational team, included Dr. Robert Wood, and I hope I'm remembering his name correctly, but we heard some of the wonderful words we would one day hear as actual participants in the retreat called The Walk to Emmaus.

This is the passage on which the retreat is based. Two disciples walking away from where their dreams had been shattered and back to their home where they could regroup and maybe regather themselves for continued ministry. Some have speculated that one or both of these disciples were crying, no, sobbing and with tear-filled eyes their vision was limited. Their minds were perhaps cluttered with so many questions about all they had seen, heard and experienced. As they are walking along, here comes the risen Jesus, who joins them and walks with them. The incredible thing was they did not recognize Him. He asks them what they were talking about. This makes them stop and their faces give them away. Their faces are downcast. What a word! They saw Jesus crucified. The agony of Jesus was theirs too. The pain and grief in Jerusalem on that afternoon was theirs as well. They thought the whole world must have heard and must have known the pain they had felt, so they ask Jesus, "Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?" Jesus answered in the unexpected way, "What things?" And they being to share about Him all they had heard and believed. They share how their hopes had been shattered because of the death.

Jesus did not announce Himself. He asked questions. He listened. He let them pour out their confusion and loss. Then, patiently and lovingly, He opened the Scriptures to them, beginning with Moses and moving through all the prophets. He gave them the whole story — a story they had heard before, but which suddenly took on new meaning.

This is what God’s Word does when the risen Christ opens it to us: it takes familiar territory and reveals something we have never fully seen. The Scriptures are not merely historical documents; they are the living voice of a Savior who walks with us and speaks to our burning hearts.

It was not until these two invited Jesus to their home and broke bread together that they finally realized who Jesus was! Jesus had taken the bread, broke it and gave thanks and gave it to them. This opened their eyes and right in tront of their eyes, Jesus disappeared.

After Jesus vanished from their sight, the two disciples looked at each other and realized something remarkable had been happening all along — they just hadn’t named it. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (v. 32). They had felt it. They simply hadn’t understood it.

This Easter season, pay attention to your burning heart. Pay attention to the moments in worship, in Scripture reading, in prayer, in conversation, when something stirs within you that you cannot quite explain. That stirring may be the risen Christ walking beside you, speaking to you — even when your eyes have not yet been fully opened to recognize Him.

And notice what they did next: they got up “that very hour” and returned to Jerusalem — the very place they had been fleeing. A genuine encounter with the risen Christ always turns us around. It sends us back into community, back into mission, back into life. Resurrection hope is never meant to be kept to ourselves.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, risen and present, We confess that we, too, have walked roads of disappointment with downcast faces, so consumed by our grief and confusion that we did not recognize You walking beside us. Forgive us for the moments we have been so fixed on what we lost that we missed what You were doing. Open our eyes, Lord — the way You opened the eyes of those two disciples. Open them at the table, in the Word, in the quiet place of prayer. Kindle a fire in our hearts that burns even when we don’t fully understand what You are doing. Remind us that You are not absent from our suffering; You are present in it, walking with us, speaking to us, leading us. And when our eyes are opened and we see You clearly, give us the courage to get up — to return to the places of community and witness, to tell others what You have done. May the testimony of the empty tomb and the burning heart be ever on our lips. You are alive. You are here. And that changes everything. In Your glorious name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Slow down on a walk. Take a deliberate walk — even just around the block — and invite Jesus to join you. As you walk, ask Him: “Where have You been walking with me that I have not yet recognized?”

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

We Serve a Living Savior

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View devo: https://bit.ly/4tlFviZ

Hear devo: https://bit.ly/4tFxzbX

1 Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.” 3 I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.” 4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more. I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods or take up their names on my lips. 5 LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. 6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. 7 I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. 8 I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, 10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. 11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16 NIV)

A blessed and rich Friday be yours, dear Friend. Our brother, Mr. Kevin Pirkle, underwent a successful surgery and is in the hospital for a few days to recover before entering a rehab center. His wife, Haley, is home recovering and son Addison is in Respite Care Center this morning for 2 weeks to allow Mom and Dad to recover fully. A late notice I received is from Bishop Joel Martinez of San Antonio, that his wife, Dr. Raquel Mora Martinez, has been receiving cancer treatments but today entered Hospice care at home. Please be in prayer for Dr. Martinez and Bishop Martinez as well as for his family during this difficult time. May God bless you with your prayers being answered as well. I am pleased to report that I feel much better today and pray that I will be preaching Sunday at Pilgrim Presbyterian Church.

I have somewhere in our possession, a red sports bag that is filled with maps, atlases, and travel journals. Yes, I am that old. And I have been a member of the American Automobile Association (AAA). Membership entitled me, back in the good ole days, to access in their offices, all the above mentioned. To plan our vacations we would acquire the maps and sometimes a journal that AAA would make for up, which were like several pages of maps highlighted with yellow detailing the route from our home to our destination. This was more accessible than a huge open map spread across the front seat of our car. Yes, the old days when the front seat was a huge bench allowing for two-headed monster to do-drive it. (Kids, ask your grandparents about the "two-headed monsters). I would drive and Nellie would co-pilot. "You're going to have to turn in three miles to the right on Highway 61." Ah, the memories. Now, your vehicles tells in the voice you select, the directions leading you to your destination.

This is a psalm that serves as a guide map that affirms several things. Psalm 16 is David’s song of confidence—an unshakable trust that God will not abandon him, even in death. During the Easter season, this psalm takes on deeper color. What David could only see in shadows, Christ fulfilled in full daylight.

David rejoices that God is his refuge, his portion, his inheritance. He knows that life with God is secure. But then he says something astonishing: God “will not abandon me to the realm of the dead.” For David, this was a hope. For Jesus, it became history.

The early church read Psalm 16 as a prophecy pointing straight to the resurrection. Jesus is the Holy One who did not see decay. Because He rose, the promise of Psalm 16 becomes ours too:

In this Psalm God has provided a map that shows us the path of life, not a dead end. Easter is about taking the road of faith that leads us to life, not death.

The psalmist also shows us that in Christ we can find a joy that suffering cannot erase. A living joy that rises above the pain that death brings, a pain of deadly suffering.

We have in this Psalm a future that death cannot steal. For too long death meant a dead end with no hope beyond the grief that it brought with it. Jesus shows us a new road filled with a living hope and nothing death brings with it can defeat it. Jesus spoke of this in John 10:10, He had come to bring life and life in abundance (all the "trimming") with it; unlike what Satan sought; steal, kill, and destroy.

Easter means the grave is no longer a destination—it’s a doorway. The God who kept His promise to Jesus will keep His promise to you. The risen Christ stands as proof that God’s goodness is not fragile, temporary, or uncertain. It is eternal, abundant, and unstoppable.

Psalm 16 invites us to rest in that truth. To say with David: “Lord, you are my portion.” To trust that the One who conquered death can carry us through anything.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, risen Savior, thank You for the victory of Easter. Thank You that in You we have a path of life, a refuge in every storm, and a joy that death cannot touch. Teach us to trust You the way David trusted You—to rest in Your goodness, to walk in Your presence, and to live with resurrection hope. Fill our hearts with the confidence that You are with us now and forever. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Take one moment today to thank God for one specific way His resurrection hope is shaping your life right now. Let that gratitude guide your next step forward.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me.

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.

BUILDING12: Go and Make Disciples! (The Great Commission)

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19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."(Matthew 28:19-20 NRSV)

Happy Wednesday, dear Friend! May this be a day of new beginnings and blessings. May we pray for the blessing of health for those who have asked prayers from us. The Rev Stacey Evans, Valleyspring UMC has cancer and has been very sick. Please pray for her healing and wellbeing. Please also be in prayer for those pastors who have been notified of upcoming moves. May God bless them as they prepare to leave churches and homes to new settings. Prayers especaiily for spouses and children, as moves are never easy for them.

Well dear ones, this is the final and twelfth teaching of our Lord to His Disciples. They have been in chronological order and this final one is the deployment orders, or marching orders, to these men to go into the world and to transform it. It happens on a mountain spoken by the resurrected Jesus and He is very explicit in what it will take to win the world. Two verses. A command, a method, and a promise. This is the Great Commission — not an aspirational motto for the especially courageous, but an assignment given to ordinary, doubting, still-figuring-it-out followers of Jesus. It was theirs. And it is ours.

Before Jesus says go, He says something that reframes every word that follows. He says: all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. This is not a warm-up line. It is the entire foundation on which the commission stands.

A commission is only as weighty as the one who issues it. A general's orders carry the force of the army behind them. A sovereign's word carries the weight of the throne. When Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Him — not some authority, not authority in certain jurisdictions, but all of it — He is establishing that there is no place His disciples will ever go where He is not already Lord.

This changes everything about how we approach the mission. We do not go into the world hoping Jesus might have some influence there. We go into a world that already belongs to Him — a world for which He died and over which He reigns. The harvest field is not enemy-occupied territory from which we are trying to steal a few souls. It is the Father's field, and the risen Son is Lord of every square inch of it. We have His orders and for some, more importantly, we have His permission. For many of us, having permission is key to all things. I grew up in a home where we had to have permission to do this or that. So much so that on the very first night in college, a new friend asked me to go to the movies with him. I hesitated and said, "Let me go inside and get...." I stopped and laughed, I was going to say I needed to get permission.

So many followers of Jesus hesitate at the edge of the commission because they feel inadequate. They do not know enough theology. They have not resolved all their own questions. Their lives are messy enough that they wonder who they are to speak to anyone else about God. And so the commission stays at arm's length — admired, agreed with, and quietly ignored.

But Jesus does not say go because you are ready. He says go because I am Lord. The authority behind this mission is not yours to generate. It is His to grant — and He has granted it fully. The most uncertain disciple in that hillside crowd went forward on the same authority as the most confident one. What separated those who changed the world from those who faded into obscurity was not their qualifications. It was their willingness to lean on His. And please remember we are not sent because we have all the answers. We are sent because He has all authority.

In the original Greek, the Great Commission has one main verb and three supporting ones. The grammatical anchor of the entire sentence — the thing Jesus is most fundamentally commanding — is make disciples. Go, baptizing, and teaching all describe how disciplemaking happens. But the irreducible heart of the commission is this: make disciples.

Not make converts. Not make church attenders. Not make people who agree with a set of doctrinal propositions. Make disciples. The Greek word is matheteuein — to make learners, to apprentice someone into a way of life. A disciple in the ancient world was not simply someone who held certain beliefs. A disciple was someone whose entire manner of living was being shaped by a master's teaching and example.

To make a disciple is therefore a far richer, slower, more demanding undertaking than we often acknowledge. It is not a single conversation or a prayer prayed at an altar, though those moments can be sacred doorways. It is the sustained, relational investment of walking alongside someone as they learn to follow Jesus — answering their questions, modeling what obedience looks like, welcoming them into community, and staying with them through the long, uneven arc of growth.

Going. The word go carries within it an assumption that the people of God are a sent people — always moving outward, not waiting for the world to wander in. The church is not primarily a destination. It is a sending community, a people perpetually oriented toward those who have not yet heard. For some, that going crosses an ocean. For most, it crosses a street, a hallway, a lunch table, or a backyard fence, or cross the aisle in church on a Sunday morning.

The nations Jesus speaks of — panta ta ethne in Greek, all the people groups of the earth — are not only far away. They are often right next to us: the family from another country that moved in down the block, the coworker from a background entirely unlike ours, the neighbor whose language we do not share but whose loneliness we can see. The going begins wherever we already are.

Baptism in the name of the Trinity is the rite of welcome into the community of faith. It is the embodied, public declaration that a life now belongs to God and to God's people. Jesus includes it here as a reminder that discipleship is never a merely private matter between an individual and Jesus. To follow Christ is to be joined to His body. We are baptized into community — called, marked, and held together as the family of God.

Notice the precise language: teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Not teaching them to memorize everything. Not teaching them to be able to debate everything. Teaching them to obey. The goal of all Christian formation — every sermon, every small group, every one-on-one conversation over coffee — is ultimately a life increasingly shaped by the character and commands of Jesus.

This is patient work that does not end. There is no graduation from discipleship this side of eternity. We are always learners, always being formed, always being conformed more deeply to the image of the One who called us. And so the teaching church is also always a learning church — humble enough to keep growing even as it reaches outward. Disciplemaking is not a program to launch. It is a life to give away.

All nations — panta ta ethne. Every people group, every language, every culture, every corner of human experience on the face of the earth. The scope of Jesus's vision is breathtaking, and in its original context it was nothing short of revolutionary.

The disciples who heard these words had been raised within a tradition that understood God's covenant as centered in Israel. The idea that the good news of Jesus was for all nations — not as an afterthought, not as an extension program, but as the very heartbeat of God's redemptive purpose — was staggering. The circle of welcome was wider than anyone had dared imagine.

For us today, the vision of all nations carries a built-in challenge to our comfort. A church that reaches only the people who already look, think, and live like its current members is not yet living fully into the commission. The picture of the kingdom that Jesus points toward is a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language — and the work of the church is to pursue that vision, even when it requires crossing distances we would rather not cross.

Acts describes the spread of the gospel in expanding circles — Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The disciples did not begin by booking passage to Rome. They began in the city where they already stood, with the people already around them. The all-nations vision never excuses us from the immediate neighbor. The Great Commission always begins with the person right in front of you.

Who is in your Jerusalem today? The coworker who has been quietly asking questions that sound a lot like spiritual thirst. The family member who has wandered far from faith and might not know how to find their way back. The new neighbor who does not yet know anyone in this city. The all-nations mission starts at your front door and moves outward from there.

Jesus closes the Great Commission not with another command but with a promise — and it is the promise that makes all the commands livable.

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” — Matthew 28:20

Remember. As if He knew we would forget. As if He understood that the weight of the mission, the vastness of the need, and the reality of our own smallness would cause us, sooner or later, to lose sight of the most critical fact of all: He has not sent us alone.

I am with you always. Not when your faith is strong. Not when the conversation goes well. Not when the results are visible and the work feels rewarding. Always — including in the long seasons of sowing when nothing seems to be growing, in the awkward exchange about faith that ends in silence, in the grief of watching someone you love walk away from God, in the weariness of showing up again and again for people who may not yet see what you see.

To the end of the age. This promise has no expiration date. Every generation of disciples who has taken this commission seriously has gone forward on the strength of these words. The early church went into a hostile empire with this promise. The martyrs faced their deaths with this promise. The missionaries who crossed unknown oceans held this promise. And we carry it still — the same risen Lord, the same unbroken word, the same presence that has never once failed.

The commission and the comfort are bound together in a single breath. Go — and I am with you. Make disciples — and I will never leave you. Baptize and teach — and I am there in every moment of it, with all authority in heaven and on earth sustaining every faithful step you take.

Go back to that mountain one more time. Eleven people. Some worshiping, some doubting. Fishermen and a former tax collector. People who had failed Him, fled from Him, and needed to be forgiven by Him. And the risen Lord gives them a commission that will, within a single generation, carry the gospel from Galilee to Rome.

They did not accomplish this because they were exceptional. They accomplished it because they were obedient to an exceptional Lord, and because they went in the power of His presence rather than the meager power of their own ability.

You are standing on that mountain today. The same commission. The same presence. The same promise stretching out before you to the end of the age. You do not need to have it all figured out before you step into this calling. You need only to go — and trust that the One who sends you has never stopped going with you. The Great Commission is not the calling of the exceptional few. It is the privilege of every baptized believer.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank You for sending us not in our own strength but in Yours. Forgive us for holding the commission at a safe distance. Give us the courage to go, the patience to make disciples, and the faith to trust that You are always with us. We have major work to do, and we can only do it with Your presence and power with us; in Christ Jesus we pray, Amen.

Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Write down the name of one person in your life who does not yet know Jesus. Pray for them by name every day this week. Then take one simple step toward them — a conversation, a meal, or a note that lets them know you care. The Great Commission always begins with one name.

I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!

Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.