Whatever one’s belief system, this is historically a good weekend to meditate on what makes a belief “true”. If I say I believe something, but don’t in fact, myself, act in accordance with it, what is the meaning and purpose of my belief? If I say I believe Someone loves me enough to suffer for me (and some believe die for me), but I accept that Someone’s love only to make myself feel better, and not in order to love those others in the world in need of a belief in A Love Without Strings Attached, what does that say about what I truly believe about the quality of a Higher Love?
As we look to what we say we believe, we often get stuck in the childish questions, like, “How has it changed me? How am I better a person? How does my future look brighter?” But the real questions to ask myself that the events commemorated in this weekend ask, the grown-up questions of The Christ are: “How does what I believe make me want to change the World? How does The Divine make me a better human being? How do I bring the future Kingdom of God to earth — now, today, here, for all — as The Christ did?”
If we aren’t suffering with others on Friday, and mourning for the whole world, the whole Earth on Saturday, we will never truly know what it is to celebrate life and resurrection on Sunday. No matter what one claims to believe, this is a good weekend to ponder as the philosopher might ask, What do we owe each other? And as the prophets or saints might ask, What would happen if some of us began to really believe in Love?
First, get poor. Literally. Wonder not only where your next meal will come, but be shunned by any group of so -called safety net groups. Be outcast by your religious institution for being sinful and “unclean”; and be considered an illegal alien by the country you have grown up in.
Next make sure if you are not yourself currently in labor with an expected child, that you are the spouse of a very pregnant woman. Decide to relocate with no job, no insurance and with no health care, no doctor, and no Douala around. If you can’t manage being pregnant or the spouse of someone pregnant by Christmas time, then, make sure you are really, really, really sick with something that could easily kill you and that makes it hard to walk or talk or even focus on anything other than how you feel physically which is in pain, afraid, and, well, in pain and afraid. Oh, and make sure you are of an ethnic religion that the entire world is prejudiced against. Like Jewish, maybe? Then…
Take a 90 mile (157 kilometer) trip by foot. In worn sandals or barefoot. On dusty dangerous dirt roads. Make sure as you travel (remember, very pregnant or very ill) that you are dependent on the kindness of strangers for the food and water you need on the 90 mile trip. Make sure that even if you arrive after about a week’s walk, that you have no where to stay and that you know no one when you arrive at your final destination. If you do arrive that is, considering the violence in the country in which you are currently living, where not only criminals and terrorists abound but even those who are meant to uphold the law have become lawless. I mean the police / soldiers, governors / senators, and priests / rabbis. Those lawless ones who can demand any thing of you or from you since you have no rights.
Since you are treated like an animal, decide to have your baby in a sheep shed. At least it is out of the elements and will be safe from the wild dogs. If you can not manage a pregnancy in a sheep shed, this Christmas, and have opted to merely be super, super sick to recreate the true experience, then simply leave your medications behind and after your 90 mile walk, find a little cage at the southern border of your country and snuggle in with all the other outcast, unwanted folks. This will help you feel like the parents of the Christ child felt on the day we celebrate his birth.
And as you contemplate this recipe for preparation of a true Christmas, remember that the angels, and kings , the God as Father and miracles –they are all part of a story that people told long after the Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph had to tell Jesus about the night He was born. That night, Mary and Joseph were just happy to be alive and that their kid was alive.
And as you prepare your recipes for a true Christmas, remember that Jesus loved being alive, just like we do. And that He didn’t want to die, just like we don’t. But that He believed that only in His death, could He have eternal life with God, just like we can.
So celebrate Christmas and celebrate the fact that today, you are alive. And being alive can feel like nothing or it can be every thing. And being alive means you can make choices today.
The recipe for my Christmas celebration should be the same as every day. Will I choose the ingredients for my life that the Jewish Messiah did? That the Jewish parents of Jesus did? Will I choose to walk the long, lonely, painful road not just to Bethlehem but to Calvary? Will I find joy in a sheep manger as easily as I find joy around a hearth with my well-fed and well-cared for loved ones? Will I be willing to care little for my own comforts in comparison to my great thirst to know and love Jehovah, the Lord? Will I look at others as my brothers and sisters on a planet we have mutually wrecked while mutually mutilating each other, body and soul, and try to heal rather than grab more before it all runs out? Will I believe that there is a future day of celebration when Jesus is the ruler of all humans – a ruler who serves as we serve Him? An eternal dawn where the planet is no longer just one big sheep shed and that the recipe for eternal peace, love and joy will be finally re-made by The Chef who created it in the first place?
Will I who claim the road to Calvary, take The Christ’s first baby steps on the road to Bethlehem?
What meals and snack ideas do I have for eating and making for others while traveling Life’s road? Jesus’ idea for a good meal on the road, was His body and blood. Messiah knew in His heart the truth of this Hebrew recipe: “Oh, taste and see that The Lord is good! Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)
A Recipe/ Psalm for a Judeo-Christian Holiday
By Jane Tawel
Dear Creator,
First fill my cup with thirst.
May my hands kneed love in need of You.
Spice up my heart with passion for Your Word.
And let the Oil of my faith in Your Covenant
Never run out.
May a small teaspoon be the only portion
Of my earthly gain
So that my eternal fill will
Be only eaten in Your Forever
Feast of Body and Blood.
May I never turn away from my table
strangers and sojourners; and
Just as You have always fed
Both the good and bad
With sunshine and rain;
May I not stand in judgement
Over the meals that others make;
But instead look to the small
Morsel of my own small self.
May no matter how many times
I eat of You;
Or how much I am served of
Your words and Your Word,
May I hunger only more;
May I thirst only more deeply
For Your Approval,
For Your Love.
May I receive at Your mighty hands–Hands
That created all the ingredients and recipes for all living things—
A wee little Christmas star—
One star out of the billions of stars that rate the universal Creations—
May I get a little half star,
rating my life today
As worthy of You.
Please, Oh Lord of All,
Messiah, Christ-child,
God of the Ages,
I humbly offer today,
A morsel – an offering of my life,
Of my small snack of a soul.
May you multiply the ingredients of my life today,
Jane: Do Not Go Gracefully Into That Good Night (Not that you even could if you tried you old dingbat!)
by Jane Tawel
March 10, 2018
Who gave someone the creative license to come up with the idiom, “aging gracefully”? There ain’t much graceful about not being able to bend down without cringing and creaking to pick something up. I don’t connect gracefulness with the gait I now use to jog in the mornings. Grace is not one of those things people associate with my age when I drop things because my hands no longer grip as tightly as they should.
Tomorrow I greet another marker of the day of my birth. And I hurt all over. We, of my age, joke that being old means you never have a day without pain – somewhere – sometimes it seems every where. I remember a friend telling me about the medication he was on for some illness that had the side effect of removing all of his pains. He immediately understood why people get addicted to these drugs. It wasn’t until he started taking it that he realized that the difference between youth and age is that when you are young, you enjoy most days without any aches any where; while when you get older you always have an ache somewhere, sometimes you have an ache everywhere. This past week I was joking with other “of an age” teachers, that every day I wake up and am for some reason, shocked and surprised to find that things hurt. It is like being a little child again, except the opposite. Little children wake up every day to find new things they can do and are pleasantly surprised. Old folks wake up every day shocked anew to find old things they can’t do any more, and are unpleasantly resigned. My mom always says with a bit of sass, “but I don’t feel that old inside”.
Of the many wonderful things my ancestors passed down to me, arthritis is not one of the wonderful ones. Hands gnarling like claws and joints frozen in stiff excruciation; a back that believes it was only created to go forward and not turn without causing its owner to wince like a baby-I-see-a-baby. These devils of discomfort not only give me physical pain, but emotional as well. I am too young at heart to have my body do this. It just doesn’t suit my personality – which is immature.
And I sure can’t wear high heels any more. Not that any woman should subject herself to those tootsie torture chambers! My feet and knees were once the day’s darlings. My intrepid trotters trod tirelessly the heights and depths. My articulatio genu (so I love a good Google, so sue me!) — ran seven seven-minute miles seven days a week, in a godly perfection of physical fitness. Now, “at an age”, after a day in orthopedic looking Aerosols, my non-pedi-ed horn crowned hoofers cry out: “Help us! Save us! Do you not know that, We are but flesh and bone!”
Do I count my blessings daily? You betcha’! I do not (yet) have to go through the horrific things friends do when they get cancer. I have had a relatively healthy body since youth. The fruit of my womb are healthy and the Fruit of the Loom I wear is while no longer a size 4, a somewhat acceptable size 8. I have had a long life already and hope to trot-in-place this globe a few years more, God willing.
But it is interesting to teach Bible this year and stand in front of my students’ darling, perfect little selves, still sporting a bit of baby fat, or with limbs so childishly thin and muscle-less that you just want to hand them a raw steak and some cheesecake to wash it down.
My students come with prayer requests for colds and sniffles but also for ailing grandparents, and serious family illnesses. And I love to pray with them, but I also have to tell these budding believers in as gentle and childlike way as I can muster, the hard, sad facts of life; that although my own sin does not cause my infirmities, I have infirmities in this lifetime because of sin. In a nutshell, Paul says in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—“
I happened upon this quote by Karl Barth, “No cultural education, no art, no evolutionary development helps us beyond our sins. We must receive assistance from the ground up. Then the steep walls of our security are broken to bits, and we are forced to become humble, poor, and pleading. Thus we are driven more and more to surrender and give up all that we have, surrender and give up those things which we formerly used to protect and defend and hold to ourselves against the voice of the resurrection’s truth.”
I see a lot of people – and I am tempted – who try to protect something impossible to protect – their youthful selves The Baal of Botox beckons and I, too, sacrifice much moola on the altar of the Pandora of skin potions. But what does it profit an old girl if she gains a good mask for her wrinkles, but in the process loses about a trillion, gazillion dollars? The flip side is –Old age can be a great forceful stimulant to eradicate one’s pride and provide a needed tonic for a new sense of directed and peaceful humbleness.
My birthday always falls in the season of Lent. When I give up something like sweets, that either makes me sad or I break my Lenten promises to God. (Thank God, I only gave up newspapers this year – good for my soul and good for my poor old eyes.) Today I was thinking about aging and Lent. I can either sink into a depression about all the things that go wrong with my body (and don’t even get me started about what goes wrong with one’s mind! With one’s mind. With one’s mind. Wait, did I already say that?) Or during Lent I can reflect and rejoice.
If one’s season as a child is like Christmas, and as a young adult, like the Fourth of July, then this season of my life must be a season of Lent; and like Lent itself, it seems to be in some perverse way, one of the hardest times and yet one of my favorite times. It is a season of life when I have a long road behind me of so many wonderful years and people, and although I wish I had been better at living them, I was privileged to live them at all. It is a time when I don’t try so hard to be someone, and therefore, I can see others with more grace, and sit in the passenger seat more often, as they take the reins and drive this crazy cart called Life. It is time when I know more, but need to prove it less. It is a time when God seems closer and friendlier and Surer. It is a time when I can mourn with those who mourn and in that way, understand the silence and helplessness of our fallen-ness. And this season of life for me is a time when I recognize more the true simplicity of my daily needs and my joy in their provision by a good, good God.
Lent is a time to recognize our great need of a Savior. Jesus tells His disciples, not to fast while the Bridegroom is “in the house”. Jesus later tells His disciples that His resurrected body must, like Elvis leave the building. But unlike Elvis or any other human being, because Jesus accomplished with His “old body” what the Old Adam never could, we all have the opportunity to have a new body just as He did, through the Resurrection. Jesus also says that though he takes His housing with Him when He ascends, His Spirit will come to live in our “houses”.
My aging body is a great reminder that, we do not evolve, nor ever have. When we are young, we are all like that first Eve. And like the first created human, we will choose self again and again, and again. Getting older means I can not actually “fix” most of myself any more. And for me, that means I can either, as Barth says, “protect and defend myself against the voice of the resurrection’s truth” or I can submit to the God who sees beyond our infirmities to Christ’s potential. If I surrender all of me to the radical power of Christ’s cross, then I shall also experience the wholeness of Christ’s Resurrection self.
Oh, knobbly knees and crone-ish hands, thou hast no power over me. In arthritic joints, I claim my victory over viscous varicose vice! In boorish backs that swoon in fright over the endless stairs of this World, I laugh and use the handrail. Oh, twingy terrors of troubled sleep, I pray through your dark hours! You, oh flesh, may serve no king but Big Pharma, but I serve the King of New Life and that resurrection will include this poor old dishrag of dust, this shell of selfishness, this body of broken parts. The Great Physician lives for and in me! And in this body, with walls that decay, is the temple for His Eternal Spirit.
While I may not be aging gracefully, I am only aging because of Grace. And that same grace that has covered my sins in the blood and death of Jesus, The Christ, is also my insurance policy on this old body.
Because if I know anything about the Holy Spirit of Christ, it is that it doesn’t plan on living in this dump forever. Resurrection means a makeover, like this girl ain’t ever dreamed of!
Lots of talk about the Reverend Billy Graham, who moved on to a New Address this week, has caused me to reflect of course on his influence on my own particular life. Literally millions have sung Graham’s praises, in a life time lived by a man who knew he was a child of A King. I humorously, like to imagine, he looked down on the corpse lying “in state”, and thought, “well, that’s about the least impressive thing I’ve ever been a part of”. I like to imagine him remembering the sawdust floors of his tent revivals and measuring his heavenly mansion for one. Sawdust is such a wonderful metaphoric and physical joy.
I don’t remember every time I heard Billy Graham speak (and one always called him that: Billy not William, both names not just one). But I will say that any time Billy Graham held a revival meeting within driving distance (and that might mean four hours driving back in my Midwestern youth), my family was there. I remember vividly, as a small tyke, holding my Grandma Frances’ hand and watching Graham, from outside the packed saw-dust floored, hard wooden bench- filled, barn- like “Billy Sunday Tabernacle”, in Winona Lake, Indiana. My many trips to his revivals, include the last time Billy Graham spoke in Los Angeles on November 21, 2004, when Raoul and I hauled our young four children to the Rose Bowl to join over 82,000 others.
No one can report on Billy Graham without talking about God, and as the Los Angeles Times writes, Billy Graham had one message and one alone, “Individuals need to repent of their sins and accept God’s free gift of eternal life through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.”
And it is that repent part that gets us, isn’t it? I remember the weak, shaky feeling in my legs every time I “walked forward” with thousands of others at a Billy Graham meeting. Many were walking forward to “get saved” for the first time, but I had done that back at Bethel Baptist Church when I was just a wee tyke. I walked forward with so many others, to “rededicate my life” to Christ. Because just like Billy Graham, who traveled the world with his message, and packed up his tent and his staff, and his paraphernalia; all those who came to God, were required to “come forward” but no one was expected to “stay awhile”.
This is how it has changed with us today. We now want to “accept God’s free gift” but give nothing in return. Let me be bold: This is so anti-Christ. Christ asks us to come, in the words of Billy Graham’s favorite “come forward song”, “just as we are”, but Christ demands we not stay there. There is a reason it was called “coming forward”.
So I looked up the author of Billy Graham’s iconic song, that not many churches seem to sing much anymore. It was written in 1835 by a woman named Charlotte Elliot. Here is what I found out about her:
In later years, when she was not able to attend public worship, she wrote:— “My Bible is my church. It is always open, and there is my High Priest ever waiting to receive me. There I have my confessional, my thanksgiving, my psalm of praise, and a congregation of whom the world is not worthy, — prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors; in short, all I can want I find there.”[
Dr. Billy Graham wrote that the Graham team used this hymn in almost every one of their crusades. He said it presented “the strongest possible Biblical basis for the call of Christ.” Hymnody historian Kenneth Osbeck wrote that Just As I Am had “touched more hearts and influenced more people for Christ than any other song ever written.” Christian writer Lorella Rouster wrote, “The hymn is an amazing legacy for an invalid woman who suffered from depression and felt useless to God’s service.” Dr John D. Julian wrote:— “Though weak and feeble in body, she possessed a strong imagination and a well-cultured and intellectual mind….. Her verse is characterized by tenderness of feeling, plaintive simplicity, deep devotion and perfect rhythm. She sang for those in sickness and sorrow as very few others have ever done.”
But fun fact: Charlotte Elliot although raised in a Christian home with a Bishop as a brother, did not become a believer in the Christian Worldview until much later in life, and when she realized she wanted to “come forward to accept Jesus as Savior”, she told her mentor that she needed to “clean up her life” and “get rid of her sins” before she did. And this why she wrote this song, not because she believed that God’s salvation was cheaply bought, but because she realized that God wanted her to come “Just as She Was”. But just as she was, was a mess. Coming as we are today — That is the first step, and perhaps for many of us the hardest. But as Billy Graham and Charlotte Elliot and all great prophets and teachers have taught, it can’t be the only step we take. We are not invited to come forward and then “stay awhile”, looking after our own needs and desires. We are invited to “hit the road”, one shaky step at a time, falling down, getting up through repentance, and taking one more step of rededication, on our own Gethsemane walk down the aisle of Calvary, to the resurrection of our revival in a Resurrected Savior.
The road to Calvary cost Jesus many steps. But during this season, we celebrate – yes, celebrate!—His death on the Roman tool of torture and humiliation. Do we really think we can wave to Jesus from the stands while we thank Him for the freedom we have because of His death? Paul says, in Romans, among so many other places: Romans 6:1-6: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We are therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”
We rather blithely say that Billy Graham has a new address now. But that is only because He never made his first step, his last one. Graham, as Jesus did on the way to Calvary kept walking forward, even when it meant falling forward. We thank Jesus, that not only did The Christ walk every painful step forward to the Cross of Calvary, but that He did not make even The Cross, His last step. He walked forward even into the pits of hell; walked forward into the grave; walked forward out of the grave; and walked forward up those steps to heaven. As another hymn says, God expects us to keep taking steps, but He doesn’t leave us to do it alone, for “He walks with me, and talks with me, along Life’s narrow way.” We are not meant to sit down and get comfortable. Jesus’ message, as Mr. Dooley said, is that he came to”comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable”.
There is another old hymn that comes to mind, that we will sing at the end of this holy season which is really always just the beginning of a new season of Rebirth: “Up From The Grave He Arose”. Jesus shows me the way; that if I walk, frightened, lame and blind, towards my own death to this world, it may feel as if I am walking in darkness and foolishly, backwards. But each step I take daily to “rededicate my life to death in Christ”, is in reality is a step towards the Light, which I can only sense out of the corner of my blinded eyes. Each step away from the treasures of this World is a step towards the true World, Christ’s World of Eternal Life. In the Eternal Kingdom, we all need to Come, “just as we are”; but we dare not, cannot, will not stay there. We are not invited to stay awhile here on this broken planet; just like Charlotte Elliot and Billy Graham, we are meant to keep walking towards our new address. We are meant to take steps toward the change that as Paul also says, means “we will not all die, but we will all be changed”. Change, like that first step is as painful and frightening as birth. But we are not meant to stay in the womb of our broken, fallen lives. We are not meant to stay awhile there. If we keep taking those oxymoronic steps toward death as Jesus lived it, then we will live as we were created to live, as God-imagers – not Just as I am, but Just As He Is.
“Just As I Am”
by Charlotte Elliot (1835)
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Yesterday was my religion’s High Holy Day and what for years we called Easter but now some of us call Resurrection Sunday. On our front porch up in the ceiling on a hook that used to hold a porch swing but now doesn’t, a humming bird has made a nest. When my tall, handsome “I’m a man, Mom” son first saw the grey sack hanging there with something swarming around it, his Dad said he got scared and freaked out. Maybe he was thinking it was a bee’s nest or something. I was at work, so they had to show me the nest when I got home that day. Two days ago the bird was sitting still as a statue on the grey sack. If you have ever seen a humming bird can you imagine how hard it must be for momma bird to sit still? I thought – I know that look, you are getting ready to birth those little waiting lifes, aren’t you little momma? I don’t know how many bambinos humming birds birth or how long the gestation period is or what they look like when born, but I knew the determined expectant, fearful, hopeful look of that mamma’s every fiber.
This morning at 6:20 I went out to check on the nest. Momma is not there. I looked up all around the nest and didn’t see any tear -aways or holes so I’m hoping mamma bird just went out for breakfast. I hope nothing is amiss. I hope every thing is all right.
My children used to think humming birds were called “honey birds”. My four children were so adorable. I have said it before and I will say it again, I think Heaven might include a lot of do-overs – I get to do all the good parts over and over again. And then again.
I have discovered that many of my Western World Peers do not do anticipation very well. All of those great Anticipatory Church Holidays, like Advent, Lent, Good Friday – a lot of people don’t even know what they really are or mean any more and if they do, they really want to skip to the punch. Sort of like people I guess now do designer on -demand cesarean section births – I’m ready, so let’s get this over with and get to the baby part. Christianity has gotten to be where every one just wants to sing one praise chorus of “Just As I Am” and skip to the designer good baby part. New birth fast. Hallelujahs on demand, Tivo-ed every day. My husband and I see our son fighting the need to wait on things as he rushes to grow up. It is natural and it is also natural for parents who love him, so say, “Son, some things you need to wait on.” Because we all make mistakes when we get tired of waiting.
I wonder if Mama Honeybird got tired of waiting? I hope not. I hope she just went out for breakfast.
Can you imagine if God got tired of waiting?
One way the bible can be read is of a long, long story about centuries of people who get tired of waiting and the God who never does.
I think The Church is getting tired of waiting. Like Adam and Eve did. Like the Hebrew children in the Exodus did. Like Judas did.
And I think we daily want to skip right to the joy of Easter via the caesarian section of cheap born again life. We don’t know how important it is for that life to be born of cross carrying gestation. We want to skip Good Friday and all that it means about our sinfulness, our weightiness, our infirmities, which only Christ could carry to term at the cross. We want to shout “He is risen” on Thursday, Friday and Saturday – and so we miss what the anticipation of “Sunday’s Comin’” could mean in our lives, in the world, in Eternity. Because if we aren’t carrying our cross to term, then we can’t really love others and we certainly can not know, worship and love a holy God who wants to carry us to term into a new, re-created, perfect eternal life forever. Jesus doesn’t offer to birth us free from pain and mess, but He births us in and by the bloody placenta of the Cross. God banished Adam and Eve from a perfect world with many offerings of His grace, and the extreme pain of giving birth was one of those graces. Because without understanding that because of fallenness and sin, we must with some amount of pain birth all human creation — children, art, clean dishes, fields of fruit, microchips, vaccines, novels–birth with sweat, and toil and pain– if we didn’t have that pain, then we wouldn’t need a Savior and we would forever give up the anticipatory hope of a new creation in us and in the whole world. The very, very best part of Resurrection Sunday, is that Jesus willingly had to die to get to it.
If I am not dying to something in myself, daily, making every day a Friday, then I will never know the glory of being resurrected into new life on Sunday. “I am crucified with Christ”…. Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it…….
“NEVER THELESS I LIVE!”
Jesus did not skip the cross to get to the glory. And neither can I. But He carried the Lion’s share for me, for us. Christ had no idea what the end of the suffering would bring, there was no “spiritual heaven-sent sonogram” to predict the ending. But He knew the Father and He knew that He had to carry the kingdom to the end of it’s gestation period, no matter how agonizingly horrible and painful and lonely it was. He saw the pregnancy through to the bitter end, and birthed a whole new world, a whole new creation on Resurrection Sunday. And just like I long to do with my little birthed biological children, He longs to daily offer us do-overs – He is walking along, holding our hands, carrying the heaviest parts of our crosses, warning us to be careful crossing the street, laughing and holding and snuggling, and disciplining and admonishing and guiding and investing in our futures. If we rush to grow up, we will make mistakes. If we trust in our Father,and let His Son guide us, live in us, we will have eternal life.
And that is why we anticipate The Christ’s coming once more in the flesh, in person to reign in the world forever. Because that Resurrection Sunday, when Christ’s children are eternally resurrected to live with Him. That Sunday will mean the end of all anticipation – all pain, all sin, all sorrow, and all death. That Resurrection Sunday is what we are preparing for. That is the end of Good Fridays. That means Hallelujahs every day. He is risen. Indeed. Easter Morning my husband made this English nerd’s day by coming up with synonyms of the “indeed” part of that liturgical phrase. He played around with, “He is risen also.” Nope. “He is risen in fact.” Okay. And then he hit on it. “He is risen, Kapow!”. And so we joyfully throughout the day, would proclaim, “Christ is risen! He is risen KAPOW!” It was after all, a very Kapow thing for God to do.
I was hoping to see Honeybird give birth. But all I saw was her waiting vigil, her anticipatory expectation. That is my world, sitting vigil on a planet of people groaning in expectation of something better, something cleaner, something more loving, and more just, and more true. A world groaning to be born again. We, Christ’s church, Christ’s body, are called to wait vigil for Christ’s return and to midwife the new birth for the whole world that He died for. However you are called to do that today, know that as Paul discovered when he turned his whole world upside down for Jesus and helped midwife Christianity in the process, know as you go about your life today, as Paul says in Romans 8: 18, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
Just like in the agony of childbirth I could never have imagined how wonderful it would be, to be the mom of such four wonder-full children, so too, do we see only vaguely how wonder-full the world will be when it is fully gestated and brought to new birth, new creation when Christ comes again to reign forever. The paradox remains that as we strive to give the world new birth, Jesus longs to be born in us. That is the glory in us He died to reveal. That is what our present sufferings mean if we live into His Story, waiting patiently for all Christ’s birth, death and resurrection mean in our lives and in the world. “But you beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.” (Jude 1:21)
Come, Lord Jesus. We wait and hope.
God is still waiting – with the anticipation and joy of a loving, doting father to celebrate for eternity –our birth. YHWH is the suffering God, who through His Suffering Servant Jesus, and His death and resurrection, offered each of us Life – real life, abundant life, not just 15 minutes but an eternity of all we now merely dream could be real life. This world of pain will seem like some weird Reality Show compared to our real life in Christ’s kingdom, and our souls will realize that life outside the womb of these present sufferings, is all life was always meant to be, a wonder-full reality of relationship with our Creator and Lord, an eternity of walking hand in hand in the Garden with the Father and His Son, our Savior, Jesus the Messiah.
Like my son, once you know the reality, then faith keeps you from freaking out. Like the Honeybird, once you take up the task of painfully gestating God’s love in you and in the world, you can live daily with anticipatory hope in the Pregnant Pause of Christ’s Kingdom. He is Risen. Kapow!
Because it never gets old:
“Hope is the Thing with Feathers” By Emily Dickinson
Jane Tawel 