Jesus died alongside two dying men. One of them admitted that he deserved his punishment and asked Jesus to give him a good future. To this man Jesus said, ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’
For us to go to Paradise we have to do the same. We admit that we have harmed other people. We may not have killed anyone. We may have ‘only’ spoken unkind words sometimes. Unkind words hurt people. We have to recognise, accept responsibility, for everything we have done which has hurt or harmed other people.
We stop blaming our family or our background or political leaders or anyone else. We have made bad decisions which, maybe in ways we never expected, led to people being hurt.
We cannot heal the harm we have caused. Jesus can. We need Jesus to heal people we cannot heal. We need to ask Jesus to forgive us and heal our harm. We need to ask for this forgiveness for the whole of our lives and for each day.
We then have to live seeking never to harm people but to care for them, always to build them up. We reach out to people we see in difficulty. We are generous in our help for others. Living Jesus’ way can be hard; we may have to push ourselves. We cannot live this way on our own. We all need Jesus to heal us and encourage us and guide us how to make the world a better place. We have to live with Jesus so that we can show his love to others.
We also need Jesus to give us his good future beyond this life. We ask Jesus to lead us to Paradise and trust that he will.