Hey, everybody. This is Father John Ricardo with Acts 29. And in the middle of all the craziness

and the uncertainty that's going on right now, it seems from our perspective as a team that it's

worth using these days to reflect in a more deliberate way on the scriptures every day, which

for many of us now is the only spiritual food that we're receiving. And so we're going to do a special podcast series simply entitled,

Be Not Afraid, God's Word in Uncertain Times.

And we'll try to post something every day, usually reflecting on the scriptures,

so that we can listen in on what God is trying to say to us in these days.

On this Monday of the fourth week of Easter, it's not so much the readings that I'm

continuing to reflect on. It's more just this theme that has struck me in a way that I don't

ever remember it striking me before in the Easter season and years past, that the apostles are not

just proclaiming what they've seen, they're proclaiming what they've heard. So I keep going back to this

simple truth that Jesus didn't just pop up every once in a while between his resurrection and ascension

and show himself to the apostles. There was conversation, there was teaching, there was discussion,

there was questions being asked by the apostles and answers being given by the Lord.

And what strikes me today in a particular way is

there must have been unimaginable laughter. I think many people have this image of God in general,

and perhaps Jesus in particular as being very stoic, very stern, almost,

you know, speaking with an English accent, no offense to my English friends, nothing could be

farther for the truth. I keep thinking of the line that I think it's G.K. Chesterton says

near the end of his great book, Orthodoxy, where he says, you know, the Gospels reveal every emotion

being displayed by Jesus in the gospel, save one. And the one that they hold back on is his mirth,

his joy. And Chesterton says something the effect of, or implies any way, that it's almost because it would have been impossible to capture in words the joy and the delight of God.

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