Resurrection

God’s not beyond getting small

image

“Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Hebrews 13:20

I heard something today and the gist of it was, true love always involves some kind of sacrifice. Like what God Himself did on the cross. He wasn’t below getting small. We are getting to the time of the year when we celebrate that. God getting small.

God doing something radical like becoming a baby in a manger.

That’s what I love about the God we serve. There is nothing He wouldn’t do to show His love for us. When we call on Him in prayer, He answers. And sometimes, His deliverance is immediate. Like the other day. It was my last day with my family and something had happened the precious night that was distressing. My sleep was fitful and I tossed and turned, my only comfort the trains that passed in the night. I have always loved to hear trains in the night.

In the morning, I was still ticked. My anger flared anew. It was a choice I had to make and I didn’t want my last day there to be wasted. I wanted love to win out. I needed peace, and yet I drew the covers over my head not wanting to face the day. Defiant.

Anger seeks a target and sometimes it has unintended victims. I didn’t want that pall over the day. I had a choice to make.

So I prayed there in the dark. And just like that, it was gone like a vapor. The Lord was with me under those covers and He heard my prayer in the dark. He made Himself small in those quiet moments before dawn, all of a sudden.

It was resurrection Morning.

And time after time, day after day. It’s Easter all over again.

That’s the God I love.

 

No more goodbyes

1653913231_ea52dd0e6a_o

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4

When the girl at the airport hears the announcement that her plane is starting to board, she turns to the boy who is seeing her off. “I guess this is goodbye,” she says.

The noise of the traffic almost drowns out the sound of the word, but the shape of it lingers on the old man’s lips. He tries to look vigorous and resourceful as he holds out his hand to the other old man. “Goodbye.” This time they say it so nearly in unison that it makes them both smile.

The poignancy of “Goodbye.” Frederick Buechner captures the tragedy and sadness of it beautifully in today’s reading from “Listening to Your Life.” I remembered this one as soon as I flipped the page, because at some point I had circled the date on it. It always rocks me to the core, because this is the essence of what it means to feel the sorrow of the fall.

We were never meant for death or any kind of goodbyes for that matter. He never desired it or designed us for it. That all came when we presumed to know better  and went for that one forbidden thing He knew would separate ourselves from Him forever. And this of course, is the whole reason Jesus came. That we might be able to banish that word from our experience and vocabulary forever. In His great mercy, He has given us a second chance to trust His love.

The swift passage of time startles me into the realization that I don’t have much of it left. I am ready to be done with coming and going. Regularly, I have to board a plane and leave one home for another. I have done it for years now, and it only gets harder. I pray that God will grant me this one wish. Because goodbyes are like a little bit of hell, over and over again. Selfishly, I want everyone in one place. There, I said it.

And yet, it would be wrong to describe the sorrow of goodbye without the Heavenly joy of the greetings I cherish on arrival. If I never have to board a plane again, I will always remember the hopeful joy in their faces, the shriek of delight at seeing me grinning my way down that escalator jostling my luggage. The arms held open……..Yes, that right there is a little bit of the sweetness of Heaven.

And always someone on each end to welcome me home.

The Miracle of Belief

IMG_3906

I live and move and believe in a state of Grace, each day. The fact that I believe is a testimony to God’s great mercy and each day I am awed and greatly humbled by that fact. What makes one person believe and strive to live out a faith and another not give it a thought? I have always thought that people usually die just the way they lived unless a miracle happens. We are all born under the same stars but under many different sets of circumstances. I have seen people make it out of unbearable conditions of life and come to belief in God and salvation in Jesus. And I have seen others with seemingly every opportunity crash right through life, leaving all kinds of destruction in their wake and not ever look up and the sky and wonder “who put all that there.”

It’s amazing really.

We went to visit Joyce at the Care Facility yesterday, and it’s always a grim reminder of mortality. Two ladies were sitting out in the patio in 100 hundred plus degrees puffing away on their cigarettes. Both their lips were moving, cigarettes bobbing up and down, spilling ash as they talked. There but for the grace go any of us……….I always find myself praying a lot when I go there and the prayer is just under my breath………”Oh dear Jesus don’t let me live this long.” What I really mean is, “Don’t let me end up in a place like this.” It’s tough to visit, and I can imagine it’s tough to work there too.

But Joyce is blessed, she has a good daughter, a Grace-filled light in the window to come bring her treats, to do things for her that otherwise don’t seem to get done. It’s hard to visit because there is not much conversation to be had anymore, but this is the tough part of a real and living faith.

Who is your light in the window today? We all need to recognize these gifts from God and look up awestruck and thank Him each and every day. His gifts come in all different forms. I pray that I will always be able to see what’s standing right in front of me as His grace…….His love……His mercy.

I have recently restarted Frederick Buechner’s “Listening to Your Life” again. It is a gem of a book……I don’t know how many times I have read through it, but each time I pick it up again I find I’m reading it with new eyes. He is one of the writers I reach for when my feelings are too deep for my own measly words.

Add to that list, Thomas Merton, Henry Nouwen and C.S. Lewis.

A final thought from today’s devotional:

“The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of man’s indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God’s unspeakable love.” Frederich Buechner, Sept 2, Listening to Your Life

We are all hurtling toward either Heaven or hell. Jesus said that, not me. Each day there is a new chance to change your direction. “You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God.” Hebrews 3:13

IMG_4587

I walked in the rain

 in Just-spring

Last night I did what I always say I’m gonna do when it rains, I went out and took a walk in it. And it was marvelous. It was almost Holy, a Baptism from the skies. I walked once around the park, the silvery cold drops hitting my skin like mercy. That is what rain in the desert feels like you know. Those who have rain all the time just don’t understand what heaven it is.

I walked past all the dark and shuttered houses, and I heard the drops like music on all the metal carports, God’s percussion.

I kept walking as the rivulets of water started to collect en mass and pour down the middle of the streets. Amidst the stream there was a bubble parade and each one caught the streetlights, otherwise I never would have seen them. They were marching onward and I watched as they gathered, pooled and ran down the middle of the street like they were all-stars in a Mr. Bubble commercial.

My glasses covered in drops, I was looking out on a world transformed as though I were looking through prisms……I was the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. It was like when I was very small and would press my face to the glass when it rained, imagining another world in which everything and everyone were made of diamonds.

I wondered at all the quiet houses. Walking in the rain sounds crazy when you are inside looking out, but when you are actually in it, it seems like the most rational thing to do. Ask any kid. Watch them laugh as they turn their face to the heavens, catching drops. We tell them, come inside you’ll catch your death. When they are really trying to catch life.

I came inside. E was on the couch with the iPad and didn’t look up. She is used to my weird notions. She just smiles and nods when I say I’m gonna go around again. And I did.

On the way home I passed by Mama dove who was snug on top of her nest, where she has been for the past month. She peeked out from between the thorns, totally dry, totally safe……

I was soaked and it was wonderful. It was the perfect way to wash off the workweek.

 “But if I were you, I would appeal to God;
    I would lay my cause before him.
He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed,
    miracles that cannot be counted.
He provides rain for the earth;
    he sends water on the countryside.
The lowly he sets on high,
    and those who mourn are lifted to safety.
He thwarts the plans of the crafty,
    so that their hands achieve no success.

Job 5:8-12

photo credit: google images

The Wheat and the Tares

 

10442_3757979670032_1127498526_n

It all started last March when I heard about the two suicides……two young people that couldn’t find any hope that things would get better. One of which was the neighbor of my Aunt, parents finding what was left of her. The beauty and the soul and the perfection that was her life. And then a week later, a phone call. My cousin’s son did the very same thing. In disbelief I almost dropped the phone. To me, there is no sadder horror than that for a parent.

And the recent events in the news, coming one after the other, so much so that we can barely keep track of them all. Planes shot down over Ukraine……a bank robbery, a hostage situation and a highspeed chase on the very street I drove down when I was back home two weeks ago. Bullets flew, hundreds of them. And an innocent bystander coming in to do her banking was caught in the crossfire.

Her daughter waited in the car, then watched horrified as her Mom was used as a shield while they got away. She texted her Dad……”They have Mom.” She didn’t come back.

You would think all this would be reason enough to give up on this life. We live in a world where heaven and hell coexist like the wheat and the tares that thrive side by side. And yet…..

There is poetry and music and art and crowded sidewalks and family and friends, and the smile of a child. And it all adds up to an incredible relentless beauty that tugs at the soul and won’t let go.

I can’t ignore the drops of rain that fall quietly on the pond like a prayer, the relentless beauty that falls all around us on any given day. There is a peace that comes from sitting on a porch with a view that wraps around you.

I can’t account for the joy that beats like wild wings within my chest except that I recognize it as the Holy Spirits quickening because that’s how God is. He shows up.

He permeates the air with His presence especially when it seems all hope is lost forever. He says:

No, it’s not, because I am.

In troubled times we need to gather the ones we love close and get rid of everything else that weighs us down. We need to walk humbly in love and cradle carefully the gift we have from God, and never lose our sense of wonder at the world that was once perfect.

Be surprised each day at what God redeems out of the ashes. Never forget the moment you first believed. He is coming quickly, so my advice is be ready.

Raise your eyes to the Heavens and never lose hope. Remember that even thistles and artichokes yield spectacular blooms.

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.

The Me I See

 156888_4605201570050_875512989_n

Sometimes, when I am outside of myself looking in, I see the real me not the one I have imagined or invented. And sometimes I don’t recognize that person talking, smiling, interacting with others. But there is someone else I see, just on the fringe of my consciousness, just outside the ring.

Sometimes she hides in the shadows waiting for me to find her, but sometimes she dances into the light just long enough for me to get a glimpse, then she jumps back, ripples of laughter in her wake.

She beckons me with a wave of her hand and when I finally join her, that other me, the one that happens when I am still, or creating, or caught up in catching the stream of life, or praying, that’s when I get in touch with who I really am. I guess when I lose myself is when I find myself. Jesus said something along the same lines. He said, whoever tries to save His life will lose it and whoever loses His life for His sake will find it.

The real me is the one I find without trying. That’s the me I want to be all the time. The me that’s not afraid to bloom, right there in the open.

IMG_3742

I most like myself when I stop thinking about how others perceive me and just be the me God created. In doing that, I enter into Creation with Him and  agree that His plan is good, and that I am good the way He made me, doing what He created me to do.

That’s when I can almost hear the stars sing.

Living starts to be authentic when we let our masks drop. From ourselves…….from each other……and from God. When we no longer have to be afraid to speak for fear of not being loved. Cradled in the circle of grace…..that’s where we all want to live.

When I stop trying so hard to be what this world wants me to be and be the me that God made, there’s a resurrection that happens. In finding the real me, I discover that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who loves me. Running into myself, I can’t help but collide with God too.

This is what Jesus said about that:

I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10: 9

“For he who finds me finds life And obtains favor from the LORD. Proverbs 8:35

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. John 14:6

When we find Jesus, my friends, we find life the way it was meant to be lived. We find life, hope, truth; everything that has ever or will ever be good. We find it all when we find Him.

Prayer today: Thank you Lord, for loving me, the real me. Help me to see myself the way you see me. Help me to fall in love with me each and every day, for it’s only when I love and accept myself that I can love others the right way. Help me to forgive myself fully every day for failing myself…..You…..others. Help me to love more. Thank you for the joy I find in creating, for it’s where I can find You. Cover everyone in my circle with Your peace and grace today. Bind us together in love, Lord. Amen.

Forty lashes (plus or minus one)

 

IMG_3760

I headed out to my car on break after barely being able to keep my eyes open at my station. I intended to pray a bit, and read a bit, and then hopefully catch 40 winks plus or minus one. The weather for once was cooperating. It had clouded up and I was happy with that. I never like it when it’s bright and sunny on Good Friday. It just doesn’t seem right.

I cranked the seat back and opened the sunroof and to my delight, a few drops of rain, teeny cold and precious drops hit me. I listened as it lightly pelted the car. As I lay there I thought of what I had read earlier……what Jesus went through on the day He died for me. Before He was even crucified.

He got 40 lashes minus one. This was the traditional number, and yet professional killers don’t always use much discretion.There would have been not one, but two Roman legionaries, one on either side, according to my historical sources, who were specially trained to inflict extreme physical suffering without actually causing death. These weren’t just any lashes.

After Jesus was made to kneel, His wrists were bound to the “scourging post.” The wood handled “whip” had three leather straps around 3 feet long, The whipping was so painful that many times people had seizures, threw up or lost consciousness due to blood loss. The bits of bone and metal attached tore through flesh and exposed muscle and inner organs.

There was no pause between blows, and after this Jesus would have been in physical shock.

And yet even that wasn’t enough for them. A crude purple robe was laid over His open wounds which probably reached down to His calves, and a crown of thorns dug into His already bruised and battered face. Normally He would have had to carry the 50-70 pound cross beam to His own crucifixion but He was too badly beaten for that.

As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. Luke 23:26

Those who saw “The Passion of the Christ” might have thought that Mel Gibson was laying on the gore a bit thick, but those who have researched the subject know that it was bad, so bad that people could barely look on Jesus as He was led down to Golgotha.

Just as there were many who were appalled at him — his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness–Isaiah 52:14

As I lay there in the car with my eyes wide open, thinking about all Jesus went through for us, I wondered if maybe it isn’t necessary or healthy to dwell on this part. After all, it happened, it’s done. Jesus is glorified, resurrected and in His rightful place back home with His Father in glory.

And yet, I can’t not think about it. And each year, I am aghast and apalled all over again at how terrible and how wonderful it is. I marvel at a God who would go to such lengths to save me.

I marvel at a God who loves me so much it kills Him.

 

On earth as it is in Heaven

 

dpp_0011

When I left the theater after seeing Heaven is for Real, it was as if some of the noise of the world had been turned down and was replaced with a quiet deep within my soul. It didn’t hit me full force the way some movies do, it was more like it settled itself around me gently. If it had been a butterfly it would have landed on my shoulder and fluttered there like grace.

I walked past the brilliant yellow of the Palo Verde trees splashed against a sapphire sky. I heard the melody of bird-song interrupted by horns blaring, aggressive drivers speeding past the busy street just outside the parking lot; people in a hurry, people stressed and angry.

People needing a touch of Heaven.

I passed two men having a conversation where “F bombs” shot out like verbal canons, just another instance, one of many sprinkled throughout an ordinary day that call for some kind of redemption. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to get home and settle on my patio by the garden with a tall glass of tea, savoring the quiet, harboring my reflection. 

Looking around, it’s easy to see that our world needs the hope of Heaven.

As I walked out through the parking lot, it was easy for me to imagine a purer, better place right alongside this one. Little four-year old Colton Burpo says he was there, and ten years later, he still hasn’t changed his story.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I’ve never not believed in Heaven. For me, this film just echoed what I already believe, rather, what I already know. Because I believe in God and a perfectly good God has to live in a perfectly good place.

The question then becomes a provocative one: If we say we believe that Heaven is real, are we living as though it is? And as Colton’s Dad asks his congregation in the movie: If we truly believed what we say we do, how would our lives look different?

I drove home reflecting on all those times in my life when God has ripped the fabric of my world apart just enough to let the rays of Heaven leak through. Just enough to show me that I didn’t have to despair. Things that I know that I know that I know, couldn’t have come from anywhere else.

And when you have seen someone die with eyes full of hope, already filled with the reflection of Heaven, it’s easy to believe.

When Jesus came to this earth, He brought Heaven with Him. That’s what He meant when He said “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Right here, right now. And when He left, He talked of going to a physical place, a place we can scarcely begin to imagine. A place He’s preparing for us!

It’s easy for children to believe in Heaven. All too often we undermine their simple faith with our own doubts. Sometimes I think we are almost afraid to really believe. I think one of the best things about the film is that it brings up some questions that we all must ask ourselves.

If we really believed as we say we do, how would our lives look different? I wonder.

DPP_0017

Never need an appointment to meet with Jesus

IMG_3561

What do you do when you find yourself at a crossroads? You go to the cross.

It’s so tempting to try to figure everything out with our minds, but what about when you feel you can’t trust your mind? Try as we might, there are times when we can’t take it apart and put it all back together in any kind of order. And when the heart and emotions get involved we might as well throw anything rational out the window.

When the heart gets involved, thought and logic whirl around inside your head and beat the sides of your brain like a tennis shoe in a spin dryer until nothing is clear.

When I entered prayer this past Tuesday, I took no hope of feeling better, no expectation of much of anything.  It was simply all I knew how to do. There are times you enter prayer that way.

I got a call from Mom on Monday evening. My Dad was on his way to the ER for irregular heartbeat. My Mom sounded okay, but I could hear the panic undertow in her voice. She said he hadn’t felt good for a couple of days. They ran some tests and released him, and he was back in his own bed by 2:30 Tuesday morning.

I thought of that old Lewis Grizzard line: “Elvis is dead and I don’t feel so good myself.” Now, my Mom, my Dad and my brother are all on medication for heart issues. And I don’t feel so good myself. Actually, I feel fine, but the stress of all this might kill me.

I want to swoop down and fix it all for them. I want to go take over and do what they can’t.

When it’s hard for me to open a jar, I feel bad because if it is hard for me, how much harder for my Mom? It’s little things like that I think of. I toss and turn in the night and wonder when the next call will come. First, Dad’s eyes and now his heart. I realize I am going through a kind of grief. A grief of knowing someday they really won’t be here.

So Tuesday morning I really needed my prayer time. I even lit three candles instead of one. I needed Father Son and Holy Ghost all hands on deck prayer.

And kneeling there by my chair in the silence, I felt the weight of importance in each and every moment we have here on earth. This life is but a breath, a vapor. A little while and then we are gone……

Eternity stretches before us like a shimmering cord that reaches to Heaven and it’s tethered to the cross. I know if I cling to Jesus, somehow I can always find my way back home. I just have to trust Him with this little speck of time that is my life.

No matter what the heartache. No matter how bleak the future might have looked 30 minutes ago, I now find that a few moments at the foot of a blood soaked cross, a light switch has been thrown. All of a sudden, just for this moment my future is as bright as the noonday sun. And that one moment is enough.

And oh what relief it is to find at times when the soul has been swept bare and black as night that Jesus has not left, that He’s there holding out a candle to light my way.

I long for the times before vandals, when the churches were open and the light was always on and the pastor or priest was always “In.” I long for the little country parish when the minister made house calls and offered a cup of tea. When you could just show up without an appointment.

I may not have Father Tim, but I have Jesus.

And He is always “In”

In the Quiet

IMG_4057

And I say, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!  I would fly away and be at rest; Psalm 55:6

This morning I didn’t even change, I went out to my prayer closet in my PJ’s in the half-light. It was hot, sticky, and the air smelled of dust. I couldn’t really smell it, since I have never had that sense. I share that genetic trait with my Grandpa on my Dad’s side. I went out, lit my candle and tried to remember the hymn that came to me at around 2AM this morning. I pulled it from the cobwebs of my mind after a few slugs of rich, deep coffee……..

Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my moments and my days, let them flow in endless praise, let them flow in endless praise. Take my hands and let them move, at the impulse of Thy love. Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee, swift and beautiful for thee.

I never did enjoy singing it, because I felt the melody kind of dragged along, but the words, the words. I feel the power of those words and the rest of the hymns I learned so long ago now more than ever. Those melodies, those words are the backdrop of my life. They come back so often and never fail to comfort, to strengthen, to bring peace. Unless someone had taken me to church, (thanks Mom) I never would have heard them. I hope they never go away.

This morning, God beckoned me to a still forest, a place I’ve cleared in my heart. Desert beauty only goes so far, especially when the mercury soars 110 and above.

There I gathered all my happiest memories like a child gathers favorite toys. “Sit with me,” He seemed to say, and just enjoy my presence here in the quiet. So I did. And I imagined I could actually smell the pine. “It’s one thing I want to smell when I get to Heaven,” I told Him. That, and salty air and flowers. “Oh,” He said, “You will smell that and much more, for the air teems with life and only life, and death is not even a distant memory.”

If you are grieving someone today, please know that there will come a day when the joy of simple things will make you smile again. There will come a day, and it will surprise you, that you will laugh again. You will probably feel guilty about that too, but try not to. They wouldn’t want that. But sure as I know anything, I know this. Dawn will break in your heart, and you will know you will be okay. And the memories will no longer cut like a knife, they will be a source of comfort.

You may wonder why people don’t come by. It’s not because they don’t care, it’s because they may not know what to say. They may be fishing for answers themselves, and they feel useless if they can’t give them to you. Just the same, you are loved, you are thought of, you are not alone.

Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King;
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Filled with messages from Thee.

Words: Frances R. Havergal 1874.

IMG_4055