65 years ago today, The Berlin Wall split a city in half
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Our mortal Ills
It was a typical Sunday morning. Mom and Dad were up in the choir loft. My older sisters were sitting in the high school pew where I, aged ten, was definitely not allowed. I was sitting with the deacons in my favorite spot: at the back, with a clear view of everyone and everything that went on in the sanctuary.
Only this time the overflow room was open, which meant that there were people behind me, too. But I was okay with that. No big deal.
The service began and I stood dutifully for the first hymn, holding the blue hymnal and singing loudly.
“A mighty fortress is our God!” I sang out. “A bulwark never failing.”
And suddenly my tummy groaned. Not in an “I’m hungry” kind of way. But rather in an “I’m going to be sick” kind of way. But it had been drilled into me that I was supposed to stay in church and not leave. I was to use the restroom prior to the service and I was not to exit the room for any reason. I was to sit beside the deacons and not budge.
So I ignored my tummy’s warnings. And kept on singing.
“A helper he amid the flood / of mortal ills prevailing.”
It was as if Martin Luther was a prophet or something, because, wow, my mortal ills totally prevailed that day.
I threw up. Right there in the middle of church. And all those poor people in the overflow room knew it.
The deacons were very helpful. So was my school bus driver, who jumped up and led me to the bathroom.
Mom and Dad, way up in the choir loft, were oblivious.
I got cleaned up. The floor kinda did, too. I began to feel a little bit better. So, I returned to the sanctuary.
Yes, I did. I wasn’t supposed to leave, remember? I honestly never even considered that maybe this was one of those times when to skip the service would have been okay.
I sat down on my pew. I probably got a lot of dubious looks from the deacons. I swung my feet. I kinda listened to the sermon. And then, suddenly, it happened again.
All over the floor, all over myself.
My parents, now sitting in the front, were still oblivious. My sisters ought to have noticed but they pretended not to.
God bless those deacons.
I saw one of them a maybe ten years ago, when I was back visiting my old church. He was stooped. White hair. I thought he was old back when I was a kid, but he can’t have been that far off of what I am now. Most of the rest of them have gone on to be with Jesus, where no one throws up during service and they don’t have to mop up the results of our mortal ills.
The truth, of course, is that Luther was writing not about the stomach flu…but about sin. The true “mortal ill” that prevails within us. And Jesus, Luther’s “man of God’s own choosing” is sitting beside us, ready and willing to mop up our failings.
All we need to do is ask.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9.
Smile!
For months I had two giant smiley face balloons floating in my office. When I bought them I asked how long they would remain filled with helium. “Will they last ok until Sunday?” “Yes, they assured me, “they’ll last a good two weeks!”
They lasted about nine months.
It doesn’t always go that way, does it? The other day when I was at coffee with some women from the church where I work, the subject of the poor quality of modern appliances came up. One person had had a deep freeze for close to fifty years and it still deeply froze, as promised. We recently had a refrigerator/freezer for about four years before it stopped refrigerating and freezing.
“They don’t make ‘em like they used to” is all too true.
Kinda makes a person want to turn their smile upside down.
But that, in and of itself, is an upside down idea, isn’t it? We’re supposed to “turn your frown upside down”, right? But what about when we don’t feel like smiling? What about when we truly can’t?
There’s a lot of hard stuff going on in the world today. Things feel chaotic. People are ill. Money is tight. Doesn’t really make me want to grin. Maybe we don’t feel good, or our kids are struggling, or the car is out of gas and payday is still three days away. Sometimes smiling simply isn’t on our Bingo card. Does that mean we’re “unchristian” or “dragging others down”? Should we fake a smile and pretend that everything is hunky dory?
Before I answer that, I need to point something out. I am a smiley person. I’m an optimist. I like to laugh and I do so a lot. It’s my default mode. If I don’t know how to respond, I laugh. If I am nervous, I laugh. If I didn’t quite hear what you said, I laugh and hope that wasn’t an inappropriate response.
That being said, more than once I’ve been walking in the grocery store, say, and concentrating on the task at hand. I’ve not been smiling and I’ve not been laughing. But nor have I been grumpy; I’ve simply been focused. In those times I’ve had people I know come up to me and say things like, “Smile! Things can’t be that bad!”
This makes me cross. For goodness sake! Simply because I’m not smiling doesn’t mean I’m not content. And I think that’s the answer to my question. We don’t have to pretend that everything is perfect. Sometimes we’re focused on shopping, not on smiling. Maybe our grocery list has made us think about stressful things. Maybe we have a headache. Do I have to smile when a person (rather rudely) tells me to “turn my frown upside down”?
No, no I don’t.
But what that demanding person needs to realize is that a smile proves nothing. Smiles can be faked, and pretty much anything fake is not ideal.
What matters is what’s genuinely going on on the inside. What matters is contentment. Peace in the midst of the storm; even without a smile to show for it.
In the middle of the unsmiling thoughts about bills or illness or politics, are we still content? Are we still resting in the knowledge that God is in control (thankfully) and he is unphased by the chaos? Are we finding the “fullness of joy in his presence” that Psalm 16:11 talks about?
It doesn’t say that God’s presence brings smiles and grins. “Fullness of joy” means, I believe, fully accepting that God is sovereign over everything and we can trust him and that trust brings us profound rest and happiness.
There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3). And he has made everything beautiful in its time.
Everything. Even a face that isn’t perpetually smiling.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing…” Romans 15:13
A mother’s view of graduation
There is nothing that prepares you for the emotions you face as your last child graduates from high school. It doesn’t matter how many people say things like, “Just be happy for her.” Or, “Don’t cry, it’s a great milestone.” Or, “Think of all the places you can travel as empty nesters!” Or, the worst, “Don’t keep focusing on these ‘lasts’”.
I will focus on these lasts if I want to focus on these lasts. I want and need to cherish these moments and not forget what it feels like to be a mother of a high school senior. To be a mother of a high schooler. To be a mother.
And actually, I think that’s okay.
When our first child graduated, seven years ago, I don’t recall being a total wreck. He was so ready to go off to college. So excited to see new things and be done with the old.
When senior year began for our middle child two years later, I warned the remaining family that September, “You know I’ll be crying off and on all year, right?”
“Yeah, Mom, we know.”
But then along came Covid 19 and the entire second half of her year was so unusual that when we walked, masked-up, into her high school to record her commencement speech, it felt so joyful that at least she could do this little thing that the tears were weirdly absent – I just couldn’t stop smiling.
Now it’s five years later and I’ve been cherishing the lasts all the more because our middle child missed so many of them. She missed prom. She missed her last orchestra, band, and choir concerts. She missed graduation with its parties and ceremonies and public awards.
This third time around, each one of these events feels precious – almost sacred – and I am not taking them for granted.
Please understand, I am not using that word sacrilegiously. If something is “sacred” or “holy” in the Bible, it means that thing is set apart. Sure, generally we use these words in a religious context, but we also speak of “sacred spaces”, a room or building or outdoor location that is “set apart” in purpose and feeling. It is held as a special place that one can go in order to, ideally, commune with God or nature or even one’s own self.
Well, I do believe that these “lasts” are set apart, cherished moments, not only for my graduate, but for me. Set apart for me to breathe it all in. The recognitions, sure, the proud moments, yes, but also just set apart to bathe in the sheer ecstasy of being a mother.
Are all mothering moments ecstatic? Ummm…in the understatement of eternity…no. No, they are not. And that’s why I choose to revel in the ones that are.
I choose to celebrate with tears and smiles and Facebook posts and phone calls and texts and more tears. I choose to brag about my child. I choose to invite friends to rejoice with me. I choose to cherish every. Single. Moment.
Because being a mother is hard stinkin’ work. And I deserve this sacred time as much as my daughter does.
So if you see me crying at this event or that, if you’re talking to me and I suddenly burst into tears, if you question why I skipped a meeting or chose not to go to work one day, please understand this: I am cherishing all these moments, and it’s rather overwhelming.
But in a good way. In a marvelous, heart-bursting-with pride, wonderful kind of way.
Happy Valinash Day!? Or is it Ashintines?
I can’t even say how much I love today.
It’s Ash Wednesday.
But it’s also Valentine’s Day.
Apparently this conjunction of the holidays happened in 2018 (I vaguely remember that) and will again in 2029 and then won’t again until we and possibly even our children are all long gone.
Now, I’m not a big proponent of Valentine’s Day. It’s overblown. There is too much pressure. Too much emphasis on “what I am doing for you; what I am saying to you; what I am expecting to receive from you…”
Ironically, I’m also not a big proponent of Ash Wednesday…or at least I wasn’t until a few years ago. I didn’t grow up celebrating Ash Wednesday. The community church we attended never talked about it – at least, not that I recall. I didn’t know what Lent was, either. But I have enjoyed this added element to my faith as an adult.
And so along comes this year, a rare conjoining of two holidays, when the seven-week preparation of the ultimate gift of love meets the 24-hour celebration of the feeble (by comparison) love of humans.
Quite the mashup.
On the one hand: perfect love. On the other: fallible love.
On the one hand: Jesus. Fully God. Fully man.
On the other: Us. Made in the image of God, sure…but not able to live up to that ideal any more than we are able to sing the Hallelujah Chorus on the day we are born. We are “fully human”. Period.
On the one hand: Looking to Easter as the ultimate fulfillment of our needs…
On the other hand: Looking to a person as the ultimate fulfillment of our desires.
Wow. When I put it that way, it really brings the picture into focus for me. If I come from the premise (and I do) that Jesus is God and his payment for our sins on the cross was the ultimate fulfillment of my needs (forgiveness of my sins), then to compare that to anything a human can offer by way of fulfilling another human’s desires…there is a lot left to be, well, desired.
And that’s the problem with Valentine’s Day. We’re imperfect. We don’t match up. We fail. We forget. We don’t live up to expectations. We disappoint. Valentine’s Day only seems to prove that we aren’t everything we should be. We simply can’t be everything that the object of our affections wishes we were.
We are, in short, human.
Ash Wednesday, however, is all about pointing us to the cross. Pointing us to the ultimate love. Pointing us to the One who Never Fails. The One who was the perfect sacrifice for our sins.
Perfection vrs. frailty.
All mashed into this one day. “Ashintine’s Day”. “Valinash Day”. This day, when we celebrate the ones we love as fully as we possibly can despite our human weakness.
This day: when we look to the ideal love of Christ.
This day: when Jesus, the ultimate Valentine, reminds us that “when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” (Titus 3:4,5)
God knows about our imperfections. He knows and he still loves us.
As any good Valentine will do.
It’s Ash Wednesday.
But it’s also Valentine’s Day.
Apparently this conjunction of the holidays happened in 2018 (I vaguely remember that) and will again in 2029 and then won’t again until we and possibly even our children are all long gone.
Now, I’m not a big proponent of Valentine’s Day. It’s overblown. There is too much pressure. Too much emphasis on “what I am doing for you; what I am saying to you; what I am expecting to receive from you…”
Ironically, I’m also not a big proponent of Ash Wednesday…or at least I wasn’t until a few years ago. I didn’t grow up celebrating Ash Wednesday. The community church we attended never talked about it – at least, not that I recall. I didn’t know what Lent was, either. But I have enjoyed this added element to my faith as an adult.
And so along comes this year, a rare conjoining of two holidays, when the seven-week preparation of the ultimate gift of love meets the 24-hour celebration of the feeble (by comparison) love of humans.
Quite the mashup.
On the one hand: perfect love. On the other: fallible love.
On the one hand: Jesus. Fully God. Fully man.
On the other: Us. Made in the image of God, sure…but not able to live up to that ideal any more than we are able to sing the Hallelujah Chorus on the day we are born. We are “fully human”. Period.
On the one hand: Looking to Easter as the ultimate fulfillment of our needs…
On the other hand: Looking to a person as the ultimate fulfillment of our desires.
Wow. When I put it that way, it really brings the picture into focus for me. If I come from the premise (and I do) that Jesus is God and his payment for our sins on the cross was the ultimate fulfillment of my needs (forgiveness of my sins), then to compare that to anything a human can offer by way of fulfilling another human’s desires…there is a lot left to be, well, desired.
And that’s the problem with Valentine’s Day. We’re imperfect. We don’t match up. We fail. We forget. We don’t live up to expectations. We disappoint. Valentine’s Day only seems to prove that we aren’t everything we should be. We simply can’t be everything that the object of our affections wishes we were.
We are, in short, human.
Ash Wednesday, however, is all about pointing us to the cross. Pointing us to the ultimate love. Pointing us to the One who Never Fails. The One who was the perfect sacrifice for our sins.
Perfection vrs. frailty.
All mashed into this one day. “Ashintine’s Day”. “Valinash Day”. This day, when we celebrate the ones we love as fully as we possibly can despite our human weakness.
This day: when we look to the ideal love of Christ.
This day: when Jesus, the ultimate Valentine, reminds us that “when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” (Titus 3:4,5)
God knows about our imperfections. He knows and he still loves us.
As any good Valentine will do.
O Come, All Ye Faithful
It hits when I least expect it.
Grief.
If I anticipate the possibility, I’m usually ok. But if I don’t think about it, if I don’t prepare myself ahead of time…that’s when it leaps out at me and clonks me over the head.
And so, last Sunday morning, there I was in church. I got through almost the whole service and then we stood to sing one final song.
O Come, All Ye Faithful. One of my very favorite Christmas carols.
I sang the first few words just fine: O Come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…
and then it struck.
O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem.
Memories of Mom flooded my mind. Images of her in choir. Images of her in her favorite chair. Images of her baking Christmas cookies, wrapping gifts, decorating the tree. Memories of her, down on hands and knees, playing with my dollhouse.
Within me, roiling emotions. Around me, the beloved tune.
Come and behold him, born the King of angels; O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
For a moment I wondered: can I hold it in?
No, I could not.
Tears began and they began hard.
I had another wonder:
Should I walk out? Or would that cause more distraction?
I chose to sit. I bowed my head. Made myself as small as possible. And I sobbed.
Shoulders shaking. Mouth open. Silent. Heart all out there:
Mom is gone. I’ll never talk to her again. I’ll never hear her voice again. I’ll never sit beside her in church, hear her singing this or any other hymn. I’ll never hug her or be hugged in return. I’ll never see her little grin when something tickled her fancy and she couldn’t help but laugh.
I’ll never touch her hand.
I’ll never wrap another gift for her, smiling at the knowledge that she’ll be delighted with the present.
But then, in the midst of it all, an awareness.
Mom is with Jesus. Maybe right now she’s talking with him. Laughing with him. Asking theological questions of the author of Theology.
The song continued in the air around me:
Sing, choirs of angels…
Mom’s singing with those angels. Her sweet, soprano voice, once again soaring. As it hasn’t in more than a decade, ever since her stroke.
Sing in exultation.
I was alone in the pew. My husband was up front on guitar; daughter nearby at the mic. Singing. In exultation.
Sing all ye citizens of heaven above.
The song continued and so did I, tears like a river down my cheeks. I never knew so many tears could live within my head.
Afterwards, my husband’s strong arms.
My friends.
They came. The faithful. The compassionate. The criers and the dry-eyed.
O come, all ye faithful. Come comfort the brokenhearted. Come weep together. Come sit in silence while your loved one mourns.
O come.
Come and behold the knowledge that the lover of our souls calls his people home.
Called my mother home.
O come, Kathy. It’s time. You have been faithful, good servant.Come sing with the choirs of angels. Come sing, ye citizen of Heaven above! Come sit with the Word of the Father, who appeared in the flesh. Tiny, vulnerable, yet Lord of Lords; Son of the Father; begotten, not created.
Come and adore him.
Yes, there will be moments of unendurable grief. But it is grief for me. For the emptiness of the world without my mother.
It is not grief for her, joyful and triumphant citizen of heaven! Exalting with the angels up there, no cane, no breathing difficulties, no nebulizer treatments, no food forgotten in the oven: just adoring the true God of true God.
Glory to God, all glory in the highest.
All glory in my grieving, wayward heart.
Perfect Timing
I am not a journal-writer. My mom, on the other hand, wrote in a journal every day of her adult life. Or as close to every day as she could possibly get. We have journals that go back to the early days of their marriage. We can look back to see what was written when my sisters and I were born, when emotional events took place in our family, when world-events occurred.
It was my grandmother, Mom’s mom, who encouraged her three girls to keep journals. We have her journals as well, though I understand that she didn’t want them kept. In fact, she specifically asked that they be burned when she died. Mom did not obey that wish. Whether she ever read them, I don’t know. I do know that as I was packing them up to send home with my Aunt Nancy after Mom’s memorial service, I found the one from the year I was born. I opened to the correct page and sure enough, there I was mentioned for the first time. My brain was in too deep of a fog at that time to remember exactly what she said, but it was full of thanks and hope and joy.
How lovely to have her words about me, from day one.
I have not read any of Mom’s journals. Not yet. I probably will someday, when I’m ready. Of course, that’s if I can read her handwriting. She words were pretty wobbly for the last few years of her life.
I did, however, with Dad’s permission, read what she wrote on the day she passed away:
12/25/22 Sun.
John 7:1-9
No time to write – later or tomorrow
Sadly for us, there was no later, nor was there a tomorrow. But that’s ok. Because here’s what she read that day, in her well-worn Bible:
“After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, ‘Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.’ For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Therefore Jesus told them, ‘My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.’ After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.” John 7:1-9
My time is not yet here…my time has not yet fully come…
Wow.
Jesus knows about timing. He’s God, after all! God, who created time itself. God, who sees all of time at once. God, who knows what’s coming and knows how things will work out and therefore never gets stressed out about current affairs the way we do because, quite frankly, “now” is just a drop in the bucket of time.
Jesus knew the time had not yet come for him to reveal himself to the world with multiple miracles and the like. He was biding his time. He waited patiently. He did not allow his human brothers to dictate his behavior. His time on earth had come…but his ministry on earth had not yet fully come.
Not yet. Not fully.
The last sentence Mom wrote in her two-page journal entry on December 24th, the day before she died, was this: “I will come Lord. I will listen.”
She was so ready to be with Jesus!
And God, being God, knew. He knew Mom’s time had come. Fully. Completely. She was ready to see him and he was ready for her, too.
I cannot begin to say how comforting that is.
And comforting, too, that the last Scripture passage she read was about God’s perfect timing. She, a huge bookworm, had read her last book.
I don’t know the exact Scripture passage they read in church later that morning, but given that it was Christmas day, I can give a pretty good guess: Jesus. Born in God’s perfect timing.
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son…” Galatians 4:4
Perfect timing.
Or what about this?
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
Romans 5:6
Perfect timing!
In birth.
In death.
Mom’s time fully came.
This is the world…
A few years ago I came across a quote by American theologian and writer, Frederick Buechner. Here it is, in context. (This is from his book, Wishful Thinking.)
“The grace of God means something like: ‘Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.'”
Apart from Scripture, this is pretty much my favorite quote in the world. The part I italicized above, especially. I have an art print of it, hanging near my front door, with an arrow pointing out the window.
Here is the world. It’s right there: out the window. But it’s also right here, all around me. In the dirty laundry, waiting to be taken downstairs. In the groceries I just loaded into the fridge. In the mail, lying unopened on the kitchen counter. In the awkward and possibly misconstrued text conversation I’ve been avoiding all morning. In my car, in my work, in my friendships, in my church. In the news. In the books I read. In back-to-school sales and scheduled meetings and random meetings, too, on the sidewalk, in airplanes, in doctors offices and parks.
The world is in the neighbor boys looking for the golf ball they say they lost in our yard but which would have taken a miracle of science to reach the area where they’re looking. But I don’t mind and I tell them to search all they want. They run and yell and jump around the point, but no golf ball is discovered. Not in this corner of the world, anyhow.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen. And they do. Beauty isn’t only in a sunset. It’s in the lacy, decaying leaf that floats to your feet as you sit on the deck on a chilly autumn evening. It’s in an unlooked-for invitation, in 64 years of marriage, in patience from a harassed clerk, in a wave from a stranger on a gravel road. It’s in kindness and gentleness at the vet’s office when the news isn’t good. It’s in a donut, left on your desk at work. Or a note, slid under the door. It’s in the stray cat that blinks at you through the window, the nest of eggs unexpectedly in your hanging flower basket. The smile from a child you feared may never smile again.
But yes, terrible things are around us, too. Fires. Storms. Earthquakes. Tornadoes. Broken hearts and accidents. Stolen things and stolen lives. Politics, wars, illness. Missed sleep upon sleep upon sleep. Unintentional hurts. Festering sores, real or imagined. Loss. Sorrow. Death. It’s thing after thing after thing when you just can’t get a break.
Don’t be afraid. Really? After that terrible list? How can I not? How? Because of the next line.
I am with you. This line isn’t included in the quote on my wall. But that’s ok because I know it’s there and I add its intent in my head whenever I read it. The world is out there, it says to me, the good and the bad of it. But that’s ok. All that means is that in the midst of the beautiful, terrible world, fear doesn’t need to be your first response because you are not alone in the beauty and the terror. You are loved. You are wanted. You are together with the God of the universe at your side, in your very heart.
And that, my friends, is grace.
Beautiful and terrible grace. Beautiful because you can’t earn it. Terrible because you can’t earn it.
No matter how hard you strive, no matter how often you go to church, no matter. God loves you, plain and simple. The grace – the gift, the beauty – of his salvation comes to us because Jesus died to cover over our iniquities. Our sins. Our terribleness. It is a gift and by definition, we don’t earn gifts. We are handed gifts simply because we’re loved. Simply because: beauty.
And so: we must respond. Take the gift we haven’t earned. Or not.
Here is the grace. Beautiful and terrible grace. Don’t be afraid.—
Surprised by grief
C. S. Lewis wrote a book titled, Surprised by Joy. I must admit, I’ve never read it. Only excerpts. I’m sure it’s great. I mean, it’s Lewis, right? I know I should read it…but the thing is, I’m an optimist. Joy never really surprises me; I expect it.
What surprises me is this grief.
I mean, okay, my mom died. I’m supposed to grieve. It’s okay. It’s normal. It would be bad to not grieve. On several levels. But what I wasn’t ready for is this “hit-me-out-of-the-blue” grief. The concept is not new to me, that of grief hitting at unexpected moments. But the reality is rough.
I’ll be going along, doing my own thing, and suddenly there it is: tears, welling up in my eyes. Maybe I saw a reference to Mother’s Day. Or a recipe she would have clipped. Or heard a song she loved.
Or, as the last time this happened, simply being in church.
Thank goodness it was the Maundy Thursday service — always a favorite of mine — and the lighting was dim. Thank goodness I was in the back row. Thank goodness it was acceptable to have our eyes closed.
My grief built up as the service progressed. I mean, it was Easter week – so that’s emotional right there. It’s Jesus forgiving, dying, rising. How can I not get emotional about that?
Says the girl who cries at the drop of a hat.
But usually when I cry in church it’s subtle. It’s silent. It’s perhaps even expected. Of me, anyway.
But this was different. As the service progressed, the emotions were building but still within acceptable levels and then there we were, singing My Jesus, I Love Thee and the dam that kept the waters at bay burst.
“My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine / for three all the follies of sin I resign; / My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou: / I ever I loved three, my Jesus ’tis now. / I love thee because thou hast first loved me…”
CUE THE FIRST TEARS.
“and purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree; / I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow;”
CUE MORE TEARS
“If ever I loved three, my Jesus ’tis now.”
CUE THROAT CLOSING UP AND TEARS STREAMING DOWN CHEEKS. I WON’T BE SINGING THIS SONG OUTLOUD ANY LONGER. I KEPT SINGING IT IN MY HEAD, THOUGH.
“I’ll love thee in life, I will love three in death,”
CUE VISIONS OF MY MOM. IN DEATH.
“and praise thee as long as thou lendest me breath;”
CUE AGONIZED, DESPERATE WIPING OF EYES. COULDN’T YOU HAVE LENT HER BREATH A LITTLE WHILE LONGER, GOD?
“And say when the deathdew lies cold on my brow:”
CUE WONDERING WHAT DEATHDEW LOOKS LIKE. CUE WONDERING IF I WILL BE ABLE TO STOP THESE TEARS OR IF I’LL BURST INTO AUDIBLE SOBS AND VISIBLE SHAKING. CUE SPECTACULAR SELF CONTROL. CUE WONDERING IF I SHOULD GET UP AND WALK OUT. OR IF I SHOULD TAKE MY DAUGHTER’S HAND OR IF THAT WILL ONLY MAKE IT WORSE. CUE WISHING I COULD JUST LET GO AND WAIL. CUE THINKING THAT I NEVER THOUGHT I’D WANT TO WAIL IN PUBLIC BUT THIS MAY BE THE TIME. NOT SURE I CAN STOP IT. CUE WONDERING WHAT PEOPLE WOULD THINK IF I DID.
CUE NOT CARING.
CUE CARING.
CUE GASPING.
“If ever I loved thee, my Jesus ’tis now.”
CUE WIPING MY EYES A FEW MORE TIMES. CUE HAVING NO IDEA WHAT THE PASTOR SAID NEXT. OR NEXT. OR NEXT.
CUE DEEP BREATHS. CUE REALIZING THAT I’VE SURVIVED.
CUE WONDERING, BRIEFLY, IF I WOULD HAVE BEEN HEALTHIER IF I’D JUST LET GO AND WAILED?
I was surprised by the extent, the moment, the depth of my grief. Cue wondering, now, in this moment, how long this will continue? If I haven’t yet wept as I ought. If I will be like my mom herself, who, in the stress of Christmas Eve preparations 11 months and three weeks after her father died and approximately nine months after her mother died, when she fled the house in tears and wept to the heavens on the absent neighbor’s deck because she’d kept the emotions in check for all those months. Being strong. Being brave. Behaving as a Christian ought, she thought, who knows that her parents are in heaven, who believes that worldly grief is wrong, who must set a good example for her girls, who does what’s right. Always.
Always.
Oh, my dear mother.
Cue realizing that I’m more like my mother than I ever realized.
I think Micah 7:7 came as a gift to me today. I’d forgotten about this verse, but suddenly there it was, as I was looking for a photo. “But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.”
Yes.
Yes!
God hears me. When I sob in public places. When I cry in the reaches of the night. When I contemplate the thought of Mother’s Day. As I watch in hope for the Lord.
As I wait for God my Savior.
He hears his cue. And he never comes in late.
And God saw that it was good. Friday, that is.
It’s Holy Week. My favorite holiday approaches.
Now don’t get me wrong: I love Christmas. It has gifts and cherished decorations and wonderful promises of good things to come. Not to mention the birth of the Savior of the World.
But as much as I love Christmas, I love Easter even more. Mostly because there’s less stress, which is huge. All I have to do for Easter is cook one big meal and fill Easter baskets…as opposed to planning food for a week, filling giant stockings, wrapping (and mailing), decorating and baking, baking, baking.
Yes, Easter is less stressful and the promise of spring makes everything seem a little more light-hearted. Not to mention the death of the Savior of the World.
Ummm, excuse me? Death of the Savior is a good thing? That’s not very Hollywood.
No, it’s not.
Resurrection, now that’s Hollywood!
But Good Friday is not a misnomer. Good Friday truly is good.
When I was a kid I didn’t really understand that. How can you call it “good” when Jesus died, for goodness sake? Well…just that. He died, for GOODness sake. For the sake of goodness everywhere. For the sake of goodness for all time.
For the sake of us.
Even though we are far from good.
The thing is, if he hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have been saved from our sins.
And that’s, unequivocally, good.
Yes, the birth of Jesus is fun. But it’s the death of Jesus that was the point of the whole birth thing. He was born to die. Not many of us come into the world with a known purpose. A few do. Heirs to the throne. Perhaps siblings, born with the hope that their blood or bone marrow or other such thing can help a brother or sister. But most of us are born for the simple reason that, hopefully at least, our parents loved each other and we came as the result of that love.
John 1, however, points Jesus in another direction. He came “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (vrs. 10). God had a plan for Jesus from the start. A good plan. A plan for good. A plan, as Jeremiah 29:11 puts it, to bring hope for the future.
Without that good and hopeful plan, our world would be stuck. Stuck under the law. Stuck with the consequences of our sin.
Easter falls, always, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of Spring. Passover – bear with me, this does connect with God’s good plan – falls on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. This is always a full moon, but about 15 percent of the time, that full moon and the Easter full moon are not the same full moon.
Clear as mud?
Back in the year that Jesus died – 2023 years ago – Jesus was celebrating Passover on the weekend that he was arrested, crucified, buried and rose again. And so that first Holy Week was also Passover week.
What does this have to do with God’s good plan for us? It’s inextricably linked. Passover celebrates the exodus of the ancient Hebrews from their enslavement under Pharaoh in Egypt. Talk about a good – albeit convoluted – plan! The Salvation that enabled their exit from Egypt was brought about by the death of a pure sacrificial lamb. It’s blood protected them when the Angel of Death “passed over” their homes, ultimately leading to their escape, straight through the parted Red Sea.
It was entirely right that Jesus and his friends were celebrating this salvation, this most Holy of Holy holidays, at the time that he fulfilled our ultimate salvation. As they celebrated this ancient story of Exodus, Jesus wrote the next chapter of our salvific story. He became, for us, the sacrificial lamb. The perfect sacrifice. For all time and all people (Hebrews 10:10).
And that, my friends, is really why I like Easter better than Christmas. Yes, it took the death of Christ – which, at first blush, seems “bad” – but that death is the ultimate good in the world. Without that death we’d be dead, too. In our sins. Eternally. But because of that death – and the resurrection that followed – we live.
And that’s, unequivocally, good.
The Disheveled Theologian 