Easter Morning

Good morning all!  Welcome to Resurrection Sunday!  The most unlikely/unbelievable/marvelous/shocking bit of the entire story.

As is tradition around here, I am sharing the single most appropriate song I have ever heard for the season.  It's by a little known Christian band called Raspberry Jam.  Given the title "Easter" it begins with a celebratory reading of an Easter poem, and then the chorus refrains "Easter is for me and my plank-eyed soul".

I am not sure I've ever had a lyric impact my life as much as that one.  Someday I might be able to explain the reason better than I could right now.

Enjoy.

End of Lent Reflections

Why do Lent?  Why fast from anything for any amount of time?  What does it mean?  What's the point?

In modern times fasting is fairly unique and extremely so as a form of worship.  Even after completing these 40 days of Lent I find myself still somewhat confused about what fasting is and why we do it. What I do know for sure is that in this modern world where the distance between desire and satisfaction is minuscule, doing without what you want for an extended period of time is almost a revolutionary act.

I haven't had any need to justify fasting to anyone by virtue of my stay-at-home-husband status.  Basically the only explanation needed was to my candy and dessert obsessed daughter.  I can imagine how it would be in public however.  People notice things and would certainly notice my rejecting sodas and sweets.  I have often wondered how I would react if questioned.  Mostly I see myself shrugging and declaring it a religious thing with some measure of resignation.  I wouldn't have a real answer.  Experience has taught me that in giving up what I desire, what has been an addiction, something that on some level has controlled me, brings me not closer to God so much as it gives me more of my self to turn over to his control.

One of the things I've discovered as a result of this process that happens to be entirely non spiritual is that sugar had been affecting my health.  Well, duh, the health conscious among my audience are probably saying.  I can practically hear the forehead slaps and semi patronizing good for you even now as this is in the first draft.

I have lived with pretty much daily acid reflux/indigestion, or whatever people call it, for years.  It was only through Lent that I realized it wasn't caused by coffee or spicy food but, instead, sugar.  At this realization I did a very small experimentation.  Processed sugar was right out.  Even in very small amounts it caused the acid.  Sugar in the raw at the same amount caused the same reaction but it took much, much longer to hit.  The only safe thing was honey.  Zero reaction.  This will bring quite the change for my life.  I'm fairly certain PepsiCo stock will fall, so if you are invested...brace yourself.

It is easy to look at things as having an inescapable hold on us.  I spent years thinking that giving up Facebook was too big; bigger even than when I quit smoking cold turkey.  So many people have told me how they just can't do it, that somehow my success is a super human anomaly.  It really isn't.  It feels that way, to be sure, but it doesn't take a super human will.

I've learned a few principles that are so fundamental to human existence that I feel embarrassingly late to the party.  Mainly I've learned that nothing has real power over me that I haven't willingly given that power to.  I can make decades of excuses about how helpless I am, and without Jesus I'm sure it is true.  I give away power with my choices.  This has rung true so completely in me that I'm actually looking forward to next year when I'm likely to give up digital media of all sorts for 40 days.

I know, right?  Nothing.  No Netflix.  No Playstation.  No movies.  No T.V. Shows.  Just me and a lot of time spent doing analog things.  Giving up Facebook earlier in the year has created so much peace within me...I'm kind of wondering how much more of that there is to be had.  How much do these distractions affect us?  Would I be better off that way?  It is only because of this Lent that it could be possible for me to even consider attempting.

Pax,

W

On Lent: Ungrateful on Good Friday

One of the amazing things about the Bible is that if you read it long enough, eventually you will see yourself.  It's not like the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey" where you will see great heroes you want to be like, a goal to aspire to.  No.  In the Bible you'll see yourself warts and all.

Maybe you recognize yourself in Peter's bull in a china closet sort of brash loyalty and good intentions.  Perhaps it is in Thomas' doubt.  For some, and I feel echoes of this in my soul as well, it is in the father's desperate cry for his child to be healed where he declares, "I believe!" and then follows it up with equally desperate honest with, "Help my unbelief".  I wish that I saw myself in Lazarus' sister Mary who happily sits at the master's feet.

Unfortunately I most clearly find myself in the parable of the ungrateful servant.  I reference it regularly in both real life and blog posts.  Man owes the king say $500,000.  He begs and pleads for forgiveness.  King wipes the debt clean.  Man sees a fellow servant who owes him $10 and he drags him to court to get him thrown into prison.  King takes the first man, condemns him for not being grateful and showing the same kind of forgiveness the king showed him to someone who owed way less, weeping, gnashing of teeth, etc ensues.  As a result, in my personal Lent reflections I've been focused on gratitude.

I'm not one of those people who was saved from a life of prostitution, drugs, etc.  I am an average joe who grew up in the church, fell away for a bit but nothing major, and came back.  I'm kind of a super minor prodigal son.  So many people are impressed by those testimonies of being saved from massive darkness, they praise God and rejoice that someone was once saved from so much.  I remember many times, hearing those testimonies and actually feeling somehow inadequate.  Of course, that comes from a basic misunderstanding of the situation.  If you asked those individuals with the Super Testimonies (tm) they'd be the first to tell you that they wish they had my testimony rather than walk through a personal hell.

I've mentioned it before, but the most massive revelation of the past year in my spiritual walk has been from Dr. Charles Stanley, who once said that God didn't send Jesus to save us from what we've done, the sins we've committed.  God sent Jesus to save us from what we are.

We'd like to believe that we need Jesus because we at one or many points in time committed this sin, that sin, and violated the laws of God.  Those sins are just the symptom, and a good physician never just treats the symptom.  At our core, because of Adam and Eve's transgression in the Garden, we were fundamentally altered.  That act made it so that we weren't just capable of sin, but we would inevitably sin.  It is in our heart, our nature, our spiritual DNA.  It doesn't excuse us, of course, but that is why we need God, need Jesus, need His Holy Spirit, because we are incapable.  To say that the sins we commit are the problem is like saying that someone riddled with cancer's problem is the dramatic weight loss, hair falling out, blood in the stool, and lack of appetite.  No.  It's the faulty cells inside the body that are replicating the DNA incorrectly.  If it was just our actions then we wouldn't need to be conformed to the image/mind of Jesus.  We'd just need to be conformed to His actions, and the Pharisees, as much crap as we tend to talk about them, were already doing that.  Their externals were white, the internals full of rotting flesh and dead men's bones.

That is where I find myself struggling most of the time.  It isn't my externals that need altering, although there are things that are beneficial to do and not do.  The issue is now and forever my internals...and that, without Jesus, is impossible to alter.  I say I struggle, but really it has lately been more surrender.  "I believe; Help my unbelief" resounds through my soul at the same frequent desperation as Brother Lawrence's "If You do not change me, how can I do otherwise?".

It is a hard fact that you can do nothing about it.  It is a hard fact that you can do nothing about it.

I was watching my kids the other day.  My daughter has been having a rough time of it lately.  She's at some sort of snotty "tween" stage that just grates on my nerves.  It's too early for her to be acting like I'm as much of an idiot as she thinks I am.  If any other adult tells her something it is like some enlightened revelation, but if I tell her she scoffs and does it her own way.  She isn't showing much respect for me or her mother and I refuse to let her treat us like that.

The thing that keeps grinding my gears is how ungrateful she is.  I mean, honestly, never mind that we gave her life, but there is the food, lodging, clothing, tv, computer, education, vacations, etc.  We give her so much and she snots me off?  Treats me like I'm an idiot when I show her how to do something?  Tell her how best to go about her life?  I mean, I'm only 38 and she's 9.  How much more life experience do I have?  Psht...

And that's when I heard some sort of deep, bass level, spiritual bell ding in my soul.  Jesus is so faithful at ringing that thing.  My perspective shifted.  I heard Him clear His throat and I saw my own inconsistency, my own lack of gratitude, my own insistence that God is an idiot (though I never phrase it that way when I'm about to do the thing), my own snottiness.

I felt guilty.  I felt condemnation.  I felt gutted by my own behavior.

Normally I would have wallowed in all of that, slipped into a spiritual depression (it's comfy there...), and been all "Woe is me", for a few days.  I stepped a toe in there and then felt something different than my usual penitent slump.  It was so weird.  I felt loved.  It was like He came up behind me, turned my face away from my actions and just hugged me, loved on me for a while.  I didn't have to feel horrible.  And the reason why is hard to explain, but I'll try through the medium of my parent child relationship.

My daughter we always be ungrateful on some level, because she can't know all that we have done for her.  She can't know how Papa has struggled to teach her, how much Papa has prayed, and cried, and changed himself to be better for her.  She can't know how much time and Papa has spent just doing the laundry, dishes, bathroom scrubbing, floor scrubbing, cooking, etc all for her.  There is no way for her to comprehend how much her Mama works and struggles to provide good things for her.  Even when she has her own children and does the same for them she will only have an inkling of an idea because we'll be 20 years ahead.

We are ungrateful and always be ungrateful on some level because of the magnitude of what Jesus has done for us, for what the Father has done for us, and what the Holy Spirit has done for us.  He has spent many thousands of years from the foundation of the Earth and untold years before the foundation of the Earth doing for us.  When I think of that I get the same feeling I imagine I would have scuba diving and a blue whale swam up next to me.  Fear.  Not a fear for my life, but that natural fear and respect for something so massive we barely register on it's scale.  It is just so huge.  We can't comprehend it now and I doubt we'll be able to comprehend it on the other side, not fully.

He deserves so much more gratitude, so much more praise, so much more of my life because of what He has done.  And every time I meditate on that I feel something like Him replying with a smile, "I know.  Hey, let's go for a walk."

From the Garden, to Enoch, to us...His desire hasn't much changed, has it?

Pax,

W

On Lent: Palm Sunday

It has been an interesting past few days here, going though Lent.  In many ways I feel like this is the week I've been waiting for, and not because Resurrection Sunday comes and I'll be able to have sugar.  On the contrary, in these final few days the personal spiritual revelations have started coming that I expected.  There is a certain maturity that comes in giving up something you hold dear, something that controls you or at least moves you.  One or two weeks without that thing is a fad or a lark.  The third week tests your resolve.  The fourth week tests your reasons, and if you get beyond that there really is quite something to be learned about yourself.

I'm starting to see the Sunday School haze fall away from my eyes more rapidly.  Like many I grew up attending Sunday School in the morning and then Children's Church after worship service.  Now, I respect the people who do such things and make those programs available.  I don't mean to criticize them, but things get lost in the translation.  Whether it was my wholly owned ignorance that is being exposed to the light of day or their desire to make good "behavioral lessons" out of common Bible tales I'm not certain.

For instance, it just occurred to me today that Luke, the doctor and gospel writer, wasn't one of the 12 Disciples.  For that matter fellow gospel writer Mark wasn't either.  Luke was likely Greek, never met the Lord in person and began as a pupil of Paul.  Odds are he was a gentile.  Mark, it is believed, was one of the outer disciples and tradition holds that he was one who departed when Jesus declared that in order to follow Him one had to drink of his blood and eat of his flesh.  Superficial, some of the most learned among my readership might suppose, but it alters how one sees the things in front of him.  The words and impact of their gospels are still the same, there's just a little something different in the perception.

This last week I was reading in Luke where Jesus tells about the wise man who built his house upon the rock an the foolish man who built his house upon the sand (Luke 6:48).  And the rains came down, and the floods came up, (you may be singing along now...) and the foolish man's house went SPLAT!  When we were little we knew that song was about Christians and Non-Christians.  Oh, look at those foolish non-Christians building there lives on hedonism, humanism, evolution.  It's only on the rock of Jesus and his principals, doing things his way, that we can expect to live stable, secure lives.

I grew up, went to college, started a family and for a long time it was very rare that I ever felt stable and secure.  Heck, I didn't even know anyone who said they felt stable and secure.  So, the old wise man foolish man parable must be wrong, right?  I'm a Christian, this shouldn't be how I feel, right?  I said the prayer, I did the getting dunked in water thing.  So how can I feel this way?

There are whole sections in Christian book stores about how to feel good about yourself, how you're a winner and an overcomer, how you should just change your perception and you'll have self esteem just because you did the prayer and the water dunky thingy.  I've always had a natural aversion to those sort of books because they feel...sickeningly sweet, like drinking soda syrup straight.  (What?  Oh, like I'm the only one who has ever...OK...maybe I am...snorted pixie sticks?  Anyone?)  I can't take the perma-grins of the authors on the cover, their wide mouthed, way too reassuring smiles highlighted with unnaturally white teeth. (If you hear laughter as you read that part it's probably my sister.  She knows exactly who I'm talking about there).  The whole thing of "think positive, that's all you need" has always seemed counter-intuitive to the gospel...and now I know why...well...OK...I have a better understanding.

The wise man and foolish man of Luke's 6th chapter has nothing to do with non-believers, but rather everything to do with believers.  Look at verse 46 : "Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord," and do not do what I say?..." and then He launches in to the parable.  It is those who call Him, "Lord, Lord,", those who proclaim Him as their teacher or, more appropriately, Master (according to the Greek) and yet don't do what He says to do.  That would be like me learning under chef's in culinary school, telling everyone how proud I am to be learning under them, attending daily classes, then decide I know better than them how to make a souffle, and just start guessing at what goes in it.  What's going to happen?  It might be barely edible but it's not a souffle.  Why call him Lord, Lord if you aren't going to do things as he says to do them?  Why waste the time if you aren't going to follow him and make up your own life recipe?

Now, I can't and won't judge you, but I'm more than happy to judge myself.

Until about a year ago I was doing the same thing.  Well, that's not completely accurate.  It is probably best to say that I have spent the past six years going through a process that has gradually brought me more in line with Jesus as my true Master that became very obvious within the past year or so.

In the past year I've gone on a self induced/guided journey through the New Testament chapter by chapter wondering what the "commandments" of the New Testament are.  I know the word "commandments" freaks us people of God's Grace out a bit, but they are actually there.  "Do this.  Don't do this," can be found in every book of the New Testament and yet we ignore them.  Let's just take this classic, "Let there be no divisions among you," from twice in 1 Corinthians.  In our modern times many people find identity in their divisions with other denominations.  "But, come on, that's Paul.  That's his opinion."  Jesus' words are even harder, "Be anxious for nothing,".  That's it.  Don't do it.  What is the antidote?  Prayer.  Making your requests known to God.

So, long story short, I started to do the things Jesus and the Apostles said to do.  Then, and only then, was when I started to feel peace and stability.  When I reject divisions among the Body of Christ then it follows that chaos within my life at church will be minimized.  When I squash pride and foolish talk (yes, the last one is an eternal work in progress) then my relationships are protected and enhanced.  When I refuse to be anxious about something and instead give it to the Lord and leave it there, naturally I will have peace.  When I choose to study His word and be in regular contact through prayer then, surprise, I feel not only stability but His presence.

This morning I got all dressed up to attend my church's Palm Sunday service.  It was a little bittersweet in a few ways.  I wore one of my Hawaiian style button up shirts to the service because that's about as dressy as I get.  The church doesn't quite feel like home yet.  I was reminded of this because I know if I was at my home church more than one, at the VERY least the pastor, would have commented on how appropriate my shirt was because..ya know...Palm Sunday, palm trees on the shirt.

For the entire season of Lent the question that the Reverend has been asking as our theme is: "What does it mean to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ?"  I find that I'm not alone in my preference of over-intellectualizing that question.  When it comes down to it, it is not calling Him "Lord, Lord".  It is all to do with doing the things He tells us to do...even if it means loving your enemies...which...I'm glad I get along with a lot of people because that one's rough.

Pax,

W