Tension to tell everyone

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today contain the tension between the difficult choices for evangelists and believers. The Gospel of Luke presents the Beatitudes. In Luke the "woes" are included. We suffer from complacency. We are hesitant about full commitment. Luke advises that love of our comfort, emotional peace and excellent reputation may be obstacles to facing the changes we are invited or need to make to "put to death... whatever in you is earthy" as Paul exhorts the Colossians. Paul evangelizes from a position of a deep experience of intimacy with God through Jesus which has opened to him the great gap between the life in earthy values and the life in Christ where the great yearning of the human soul for the time when there is no longer "Greek and Jew... slave and free but Christ is all in all." This blessed or happy state is obviously yet to reach fruition. Early Christians believed this "New Jerusalem" was imminent. The blockage in our lives which keeps us from celebration of our poverty of pride and position and our hunger for transcendent community of people and God which can help to close the gap in our personal choices. The tension of doing this in a timely fashion brings us, like the psalmist, to the realization that the power for these changes is Divine power and our entrance to that realm begins in praise and thanksgiving.