As I wrap up this week of blogging, I write, once again, on the notion of human flourishing.  We all want it, but I doubt that every one of us experiences it regularly.  We live in a wonderful but bent and broken world.
     Yet we rightly strive for justice, to ensure that all people have opportunity to flourish. Easy to say, but so very hard to do.  And depending on the political and cultural circumstances, it may look very different from one part of the world to the next.
     One of the speakers at the justice conference I attended made the observation that, ideally, humans ought to be creatures who pursue and experience flourishing as much as they pursue and experience vulnerability.  It seems an odd dichotomy, but set against humanity's place in a metaphysical universe, it actually makes good sense.
     If we are to posit that we live in an intentional universe, a universe created by a being whose ultimate purpose is to ensure that every creature it makes flourishes, then we must also posit that we are in turn dependent upon this being for our life and being.  We are made to be everything we can be, yet we are also made to recognize that we are creatures of inadequacy and limits.  We did not produce ourselves, and we cannot know or do any and everything we wish.  We live in the grip of physical forces much greater than we.  This would be true whether God existed or not.
     The beauty of the Christian message is that in the person of Jesus Christ the creator God lived in humanity's world, experiencing flourishing and vulnerability like everyone else who has ever lived.  For thirty-three years, God lived as a human being, flourishing, yet as vulnerable as we to forces beyond his control.
     So it is that in Jesus we see a model for how we can best live, how we can best flourish.  We take hold of our human majesty and greatness, yes, but we also take hold of our human dependency and vulnerability.  We act, yet we believe; we flourish, yet we walk in faith.  We pursue what's obvious, and we pursue what's true.  We live as we are meant to live, flourishing and becoming all that we can be even while we journey ever more deeply into the reason why we desire to do so.
     Indeed:  a pointless universe has no call to do either one.
     I'll be traveling for the next couple of weeks, and will not be posting for a bit.  I look forward to reconnecting upon my return.  I hope to have much to tell.  Thanks for reading!