Beyond the Cross

 

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

Jesus saw the light of God through the cross. He knew where he was going, after he had endured the cross.

I am back from a few days away with the family, wonderful days making memories and filled with laughter and joy. I’ve landed with a thud. My e-mail in box has half a dozen messages from Mom’s insurance provider. Things I need to figure out; a phone call I will need to make. There is also something I need to do by phone later today for her bank. Another situation I have to address concerning her accommodation. And it makes me feel weary, burdened and heavy-laden.

Over these last years, this is the cross I have been called to bear. I am grateful that my love for Mom is strong enough that I can bear it, with Jesus’ help. Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will refresh you, he says.

We are all bearing a cross. The joy lies in the conviction that beyond the cross lies peace, joy, freedom, love, life itself. Salvation.

I am so grateful for Jesus enduring the cross.

Dry and Weary World

 

The sun shone with springlike brightness, drawing both Don and me out into the vegetable patch where we continued to dig and weed and feed, preparing the soil for hopefully a productive planting.

Inside, I have been washing some windows and generally tidying up a bit, preparing the house to welcome visitors on the weekend. I have been cooking and baking, planning and buying, for a few days away next week with most of the family. (Sadly, not all, as Emirates cancelled flights from Brisbane, because they transited through Dubai.)

The Maundy Thursday night story in Luke details that it was as Jesus was still speaking words of guidance to his disciples, that Judas and the arresting soldiers arrived to take him prisoner. Jesus knew they were coming, and up until the last minute, he prepared in prayer. Not in sad farewell admonitions to his friends, but in heartfelt prayer with his Father.

Lord, as my tendency is to slide into Martha-esque preparations for Easter celebrations and reunions, please pause my busyness and draw me into quiet, contemplative preparations of my spirit. You, Jesus, prayed until the final moment; may I trust that with you there is always enough time.

May I walk with you through the sadness and brokenness of Thursday night and Friday, and into the bright new dawn of resurrection life on Sunday morning. Show me how to pray without ceasing for the brokenness of this world in agony, knowing that at just the right moment, the dawn will break and Jesus, the Prince of Peace, will appear with healing in his wings.

My whole being yearns for Jesus, in this dry and weary land where there is no water.

I Worship You

 

I worship you

I stand and sing

I worship you, Exalted King

To you I cling.

I worship you

I bow and kneel

I worship you

Lord, be revealed

I worship you, Exalted King

To you I cling.

On my chair lay a cross fashioned out of a strip of palm branch. I grew up in a tradition of symbols providing a touchstone with the divine. As a young teenager, I sat for many an hour with other church teens fashioning palm crosses to be distributed on Palm Sunday. The cross on my chair yesterday briefly took me back to those happy hours.

Then we stood to worship, singing Hosanna. Hosanna. In my upstretched hand I held the palm cross and waved it before my Lord and King. As I did so, I realised that I was not holding the cross lightly. I was clinging to it. Gripping it as with all my might.

The enormity of Jesus’ suffering on the cross for me gripped me. The unconditional, endless love of the divine Saviour as he hung there in agony, never giving up on me: it hit me with a wave of gratitude and humility. I sensed his presence powerfully as I poured out my heart to him.

Later, in sharing the profound experience I’d had, initiated by God through that palm cross, I explained that I recognised that I am totally clinging to his cross. Gripping it, more aware than ever of my absolute dependence on Him.

I sensed by others’ reactions that they wanted to extend compassion to me, thinking I was at a particularly low point. But no. Not low, but a new awareness of the absolute dependency we all have on the Cross of Christ. It is a delusion to assume we just need to hold tight when times are rough for us individually or globally. It reveals our pride, our independent streaks. Rebelliousness.

May we all be clinging to the cross today and every day as we walk with alert prayerfulness through this Holy Week, to the cross, through the cross and to the glorious day of victory and resurrection. May we all be exquisitely aware of our own dependence on his love and sacrifice and his saving grace.

Hosanna. Save us, Lord. Hosanna.

Blanket of Deception

 

In North Korea, a blanket of propaganda and lies has settled over the nation, blocking out the truth and deceiving many.  In Russia, a similar blanket has lowered over the populace, spinning out propaganda which distorts and denies truth. Autocrats around the world lie to their people, telling horror stories of the enemy and fueling a ‘them and us’ mentality.

The one in the west who voiced accusations of fake news is now the voice raised most often in promulgating it.

But this blanket of lies is not fire-proof.

The light is in the world, and the darkness cannot overcome it. May the fire of the Holy Spirit of truth flame brightly in the hearts of all who love Jesus, who is the Way and the Truth and the Life. And may that holy fire expose and totally incinerate those untruths being spread by the father of lies.

Lord Jesus, open hearts and minds and spirits to hear and see you, to receive you with joy and to serve you with courage and perseverance today.

Short-sighted

 

Other Radio 4 listeners might have caught the programme yesterday about eyes. I heard a few minutes of it as I drove between places.

My take-away was that developing eyeballs need exercise. When the eyes of young children are focused on screens, they grow too big and that makes them myopic. Yes, that can be corrected by glasses, but it can have other negative effects that come through later in life – an increased risk of developing glaucoma, for instance, macular degeneration, and maybe something else.

The antidote: the healthy development of children’s eyes hinges on their being outside every day, naturally exercising their eyes as they focus and refocus on things near and far.

God has given us so many ways to encounter him. Focusing too closely on just one way – be it through a particular preacher/teacher/writer, doctrine, nature, worship music, or even the Bible itself could distort our vision of the height, breadth, length and depth of the amazing God. I hesitate about adding prayer to that list, because surely one can never pray too much? But perhaps if the prayer is not well-informed by Scripture, teaching, nature and even experience, it could veer into a self-centred distortion of the reality of God.

I’m reminded of Jesus declaring, ‘I came that they might have life, life in all its fullness.’ Perhaps it is in the embrace of all the facets of life we are offered that we really gain a true perception of who God is.

I don’t want to have spiritual eyes which are myopic; I crave to have spiritual eyes which see as much of the truth of the glory of the God we worship as I can take in. I don’t want to slide into a spiritual blindness which results from too narrow a focus on too constricted an understanding.

On this glorious spring day, I intend to listen to hear God in the garden as well as in his Word.

 

Sharp shards of pain

 

This morning I have bounced back to a previous art journalling collage – back to the broken alabaster jar. And as I looked at the broken bits in the picture, I realised how many shards point up. How easy it is to blame God for my brokenness.

First Martha, then Mary, spoke the same first words to Jesus after Lazarus had died. ‘If only you had been here…’

Ouch. Broken bits pointing to heaven. Pointing a finger of reproach, of accusation. If you had been here. No wonder Jesus cried. Of course he cried tears of anger at the power of death, but he also cried tears of grief and sorrow with his dear friends, and probably tears of disappointment that the sisters felt abandoned, let down, by him.

‘If only you had been here…’

On my collage are the declaratory words of Jesus, his promise to us: ‘I will never leave you.’ Never. Leave. You. Trust. Let go.

As I navigate my brokenness this morning, (aware that I am not even aware of all the brokenness in me), I offer up those sharp shards of disappointment, of silent accusation, of reproach. Where I have felt let down by God. Where I have wondered where he was. ‘If only …’

As glass is ground down to be recycled into a beautiful or functional new object, so I offer these shards to you, Jesus, this morning, that you would grind away the sharp accusations – some unspoken and maybe not even acknowledged by me – and transform my understanding. Fill me with the joy of your salvation, as I hear again your words, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’

Trust. Let go. ‘I will never leave you.’

Sepia Monotony

 

The sepia monotony of winter is finally giving way to the riot of spring colours. Sitting in my window, I see a branch of the forsythia beginning to open yellow and bright, a colour splashed along the drive as the dozens of daffodils swell and burst open, their trumpets heralding a softer season coming.

God knows our needs down to the most minute detail. And it is often through the minute detail of his creation that he speaks peace and consolation.

Somehow I need to appropriate that encouragement into the technological tedium I often feel challenged with. Messenger links that fail to work. Signature pages for a tax return that require signing and uploading. A protest letter about the proliferation of plastic which requires me to sign on to a different platform than I use, so makes me hesitate and draw back. Yet another banking issue for Mom. Just a lot of little gnats of technological unease that can undermine peace of mind.

I’m watching the daffs bob in the rising wind. Slightly bowed down, but still standing.

May I bow only to you, Lord Jesus, this day and every day. Strengthen resolve, encourage perseverance, and keep my eyes above the waves. (bit of a mixed metaphor there, sorry about that…)

May I take inspiration from those saints who I know, and those who have gone before. And on that note, happy St Patrick’s day.