“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock,” Jesus says, whereas “everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who build his house on the sand.” His words appear paradoxical. What can be more solid than the world of we encounter every day? What can be more insubstantial than words spoken at a single moment in time?

And yet, Jesus is not asking us to trust His words alone. He is asking us to trust Him as a living presence. That is why we must “hear these words . . . and act on them.” We feel a deep desire for friendship, for love, for meaning, for fulfillment -- in short, for happiness. Just so, we are keenly aware of the brokenness that fills our world and ourselves; we cannot forget this reality as we glimpse homelessness, loneliness, anger, shame, and other evils around us. In the midst of this disproportion -- our desire for happiness and the inability of the world to provide it -- Jesus calls out to us. Speaking through Scripture and within our own hearts through prayer, He offers Himself as the answer. Jesus asks us to accept ourselves as already loved, already worthy. When we act upon this awareness, it becomes a conviction:  as we seek to love others through good times and bad, we learn how Christ can love us as we are, mosaics of goodness and brokenness. This relationship with the Lord becomes the stable foundation that undergirds our lives, allowing us to say with the Psalmist even amidst the storm, “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.”