I saw a lady in a parking lot
Reminded me of you
Same color
Ride even, champagne
A place becomes a grape
Becomes a beverage
Sparkling…celebratory
Just a vehicle, mind you
The complications of love
Missing you despite
All you have said
And done.
Mark 9:9-10 (NIV)
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. [10] They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant.
The worst feeling in the world happens a million times a day for at least a year after you lose someone you love. You wake up thinking (for just a second…bad dream?). No. Death.
Death is a terrible darkness. It robs us of comfort and love and a person who cannot be substituted for anything else.
Gone is gone and there is a whiplash agony when a beloved is gone.
The conditions of human existence for the last 6000 years have ground each of us down in the maw of grief. None have escaped it’s power or devastation.
And yet, here is Jesus speaking of rising from the dead.
Not that I hadn’t happened a couple times…there were a couple old testament resurrections…but…
What did Jesus mean?
They did not understand the impossible yet. Do you?
I don’t, but Jesus’ resurrection spills light and hope and courage all over his followers. They believed in the impossible because Jesus was the impossible.
He’s got this.
Had a rough night last night
Looked for the face of God
Thank you, friend I have never met
Her Fearless Heart
For shining light in this dark place
It is 3 flipping twenty in the morning and I have written myself out of a paper bag several times recently. But not this time.
This time I give you a picture–our protagonist is at the brink of death when the neighboring Amish descend over the rolling Pennsylvania hillside–their quiet presence ostensibly saving the life of young Harrison Ford.
I am naive to believe in those faux Amish extras. To quote Isaiah:
stop trusting in men
This is the last day of April. Much has happened this month, not much fan fare about the victims of crime and child abuse. Quiet. Too quiet. As I have quipped before–no one wants to be the spokesperson for dysentery relief, too stinky.
I want to say this–I am not sorry I have been a vociferous child advocate. I am only sorry I have failed. My children are not safe. Neither are yours.
When I feel the despair of the freakishly ignored I understand why most victims of child sexual abuse never share their story–it is worse to tell your story and be treated like a freak than keep quiet and attempt to mend alone.
It is as though our children were naturally able to count with their hands but each time they gave us the correct answer we slapped their hands and told them to parrot a wrong answer–like carrot or France.
You might ask yourself how dizzying, confusing, and painful it would be to know that 2 plus 2 is four, not Siberia, but never to be allowed to say.
I don’t have to ask. I know.
3:34 am
Imagine you are a reasonably attractive young person in your 20s. You are educated and have an interesting job with growth potential.
Then…you enter into a completely voluntary relationship with two fairy tale creatures. Think frog in well, old lady at door of castle material. There is a spell that has been cast over them, you, intrepid young person, must break the spell!
This requires enduring a lot of verbal abuse, physical abuse (fairy tale creatures are small but fierce and sometimes quite wild).
You hang on, barely, telling yourself each day that the humiliation and loss you feel is worth the investment in these small people, I mean enchanted creatures. Someone has to break enchantments, why not you?
Yolo; I know. That is part of the heartbreak. To “waste” your youth on the ungrateful and the enslaved can feel like desert living.
When they get older, larger, and more criminal, it can feel like…well let’s just say not a fairy tale.
The other people in the enchanted woods look a little queasy when you spill your tale–what? No magic reveal? No broken spells? What the heck?!
You can see it in their faces–please stay away from us, we live in this forest and are invested in keeping up magic appearances.
But you know the secret–dark, sad, but unavoidable secret. There is only one happily ever after and there is only one handsome prince.
He was the unlikeliest of Redeemer Princes–unremarkable, a tradesman. Itinerate, shekel-less. He died a miserable death and seemed to indicate there would be rough and uncertain times for his kingdom.
His spell-breaking talisman seemed a little too brief–follow me.
Like we would want to do that. Like that would be pretty. Like hell itself would be a picnic.
But of course, hell was just a place on a narrow road for him. It was not his destination. So keep up, girl, the story isn’t over…
Isaiah 58
The Chinese character for king is three horizontal lines connected by a single vertical line. It has a story–
the man who would be king must be able to span heaven, earth, and the underworld.
Each horizontal line represents a location–heaven, earth, hell. The single vertical line is the King.
But there is more–the Chinese character for 10, a number of completion looks like a cross.. There is a perfect cross in the middle of the character for king.
Jesus is this king.
He takes on disfigurement on the Cross to save us, but his power is not in question–
the gates of hell shall not prevail against him.
He has vanquished death and restored our hope. What are we waiting for?
Transfiguration: our first glimpse of Home.
Part 1.5 of 2.
Pastor Chuck Jacob preached a sermon recently on a particularly amazing portion of Isaiah 52 and 53. Much of Isaiah sees the future to the face of Jesus. And thanks to Handel, much of what Isaiah saw is put to soaring music as well as words of hope.
But. There is one small catch. Maybe two. First, Isaiah is thought to have been martyred for his prophecy, and second….
Jesus gives us hope by becoming our disfigurement. That is what Pastor Jacob describes–God made flesh and then made Calamity for us.
I often think about The Princess Bride Not only does Westley endure the unendurable in the quest for love, he then gives one of the most apt descriptions of disfigurement ever–
Wrong! Your ears you will keep and I will tell you why…so that…”Dear God, what is that thing?” will echo in your perfect ears. That is what “to the pain” means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.
Tough stuff for a romantic fable, but an efficient echo of redemptive agony–Jesus became disfigured and unrecognizable as the real embodiment of the sin, filth, violence, and casual cruelty of Man. We, if we dare to look, see him as a monster as he dies for us. We fail to recognize the monstrous signature of our own clawing sins.
He goes to hell disfigured. But what would be a dreadful, eternal quietus for us is the force of redemptive power–him for us, God poured out for me.
Part 1 of 2
We sleep in boats
Strewn out across
An unending sea
Cling to blankets, shelter, each other
An archipelago of contained air
All that holds us
Up inflatable dinghies,
Flotsam unstable
We call to each other
Sun-drenched dazed
Testing our new words
Like… beach balls….
Flood….
Antediluvian–
post-apocalyptic always
Cup your hands
Across your eyes
Look to the deep
Where the leviathan hides
Home.
Mark 9:1 (NIV)
And he said to them, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”
I don’t often suffer from writer’s block. I am bossy enough to write about something. But I do suffer from faith block and I do suffer from what-is-the-point-malaise. This is a malady wherein you seriously doubt you are doing lasting good. it has a nasty kick–discouragement and grief, loneliness, spiritual myopia.
This pronouncement of Jesus’ is enigmatic. All the disciples would eventually taste death–some quite unpleasant. What did he mean?
The kingdom of God is Jesus. His power over hell is defining–AD versus BC defining. We all must see this power–this complete and perfect ability of Jesus, king of heaven, to rob hell and death of their eternal sting.
That is power indeed. All else falls in behind.
Some days are just hard. You could tell me I need more sunlight or you could tell me that I need to leave the past behind me. I wouldn’t advise it, but you could.
But what I would say–
Grief is a big dog sitting on your chest
An arrow lodged in my sternum
The shadow on my daughter’s
Face
Lost people
And the dream of a family where everyone is safe
Someday.
Carrying Light 