Today.

This very day millions of hearts will be shattered. It will happen to people who hear words like “It’s malignant.” “I don’t love you anymore. “There’s been an accident.”

Today, millions of lives will be transformed forever. It will happen to people who hear words like, “She’s healthy and beautiful, ten fingers and ten toes.” “The tests came back clean.” “Will you marry me?”

Today — and every day — the universe is unalterably turned on its head for untold numbers of God’s children.

“Today,” Jesus said to the thief nailed up next to him.

Today. We know only two things about this thief: that he was guilty of thievery (and perhaps more) and that he saw in this innocent Jesus a ruler and authority completely unlike the one who has had both of them nailed up there to die in agony.

What a moment Luke captures in his Gospel: a conversation between two men in the very process of dying. Nails through their hands and feet, their lungs being crushed under the weight of their own bodies — and they talk! They talk about flipping the universe — Today. They talk about seeing one another in Paradise — Today.

They offer each other comfort and hope as the life drips out of them — Today.

Like the thief on the cross, we often feel crushed; we see little reason to hope; we sense out lives slipping away. But in the last hour of his life, the thief meets Jesus and realizes that this prophet will soon rule over a realm that the thief could never imagine — and asks to have a place there with him.

And Jesus, the Master of the Kingdom of compassion, mercy and peace, promises him that he will. Today.

Today — every day — can be a day of hope, of healing, of transformation. Today, Jesus promises the good thief hope and resurrection; Today, Jesus promises all of us the sane. In taking up Christ’s work of mercy and reconciliation, in struggling to be salt for the earth and a light for the world, in becoming the humble and generous foot washers he calls us to be, we begin to realize Jesus’ vision of Paradise that not only exists in the future but exists now –

Today. Jesus promises us Paradise, not just after our own deaths, but Today, in this very moment, in the Paradise we open up in own time and place. Despite the weight of our own crosses, despite the suffocating weight we bear, Christ still enables us to find our place in the Kingdom of his Father where justice and love rule.

We can remake our world, we can transform our lives — Today.

In Christ, present in the love and support of generous family and friends and community, may we make our way to the promise of Paradise. Today.