Category Archives: Lent

The Most Important Holiday

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Here at the brink of Easter the world teeters on the brink between death and life: fuzzy baby animals and pastel colors rioting everywhere against the matted brown remnants of Winter. And a person could feel overwhelmed at the rubble of brokenness, at all the things that don’t work right in this world. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t felt the weight of Adam’s curse in ways large and small, and maybe that’s why we plunge so eagerly into the glut of the calendar holidays, to forget just for awhile the aches and pains, the way relationships can get so tricky, the masks we wear and the walls we hide behind, all the little distractions that tangle around the feet of those who run. But here just before Easter Sunday (if you have the eyes to see it) life and death hang in the balance.

And here at Easter is the crux of the matter– all the Earth’s history and future summed up, condensed into one wrenching weekend. The world that was spoken into existence by God’s Word and broken by man’s rebellion lives in feverish denial of its sickness and in dread of death to come. The eternal living Word that entered our world dies at its hands (carrying all of its brokenness on His shoulders), and then just walks out of it again. And God’s creation groans and heaves in the cataclysm. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Here at the cross, life and death lay at Jesus’ feet. Jesus is living proof that there is nothing that God’s love and forgiveness cannot accomplish for us.

Easter is the one holiday we need to remember all year. Death is not the same terrible enemy. And Life is not the same futile effort. Now all of God’s promises to us are coming true in Jesus. Now there is always Hope. “I…pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 1:19-20)

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Great is Your faithfulness, oh God;
You wrestle with the sinner’s heart.
You lead us by still waters and to mercy,
And nothing can keep us apart.
So remember Your people,
Remember Your children,
Remember Your promise, oh God…
Your grace is enough for me.

Matt Maher

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‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.  I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’

Ezekiel 37:4-6

Of Eggs and Lambs and Waiting for Easter

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I almost missed what the preacher said, right there in the middle of the music and the Lord’s Supper. “We don’t know how broken we are. And we don’t know how loved we are.”  It wasn’t until the next day that it sank in deep enough to feel, and it pierced right through into the Humpty-Dumpty heart of me.

Here in the middle of Lent, with the cross set before us, we are taking time to face our own sin. Our self-indulgence, our lack of love, our pride, our vain ambition for things that are passing away. And maybe the worst part of our sorrow, in the most honest quiet moments, is the dim realization that no matter how much we can look at our brokenness, God sees more. Not just a matter of what we can know, but a matter of moral capacity…how much we are able to fathom, to feel, to bear in our spirits. He is the only One who understands just how diseased we are– the bone-deep fragility of men and women afflicted with sin. We are without excuse, without remedy, without hope even on our best days, although most of us have learned to cover up nicely, or at least distract ourselves from what we cannot put together again.

The Prophet Isaiah puts it out there in livestock terms: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way…” (Isaiah 53:6) We may not have much personal experience with sheep, but anyone who has ever tried to shepherd a group of more than five children on an outing can grasp the general idea. I think it’s safe to assume that sheep are never fully aware of their path, or where it is leading them, or just how dangerous it is for them to be out there alone. I heard someone say once that “It’s not that sheep are stupid…it’s just that they are completely defenseless.” Indeed.

I have no defenses against the selfishness and death that eat away at my life, nor any defense in the face of the standards that I can’t measure up to. But Isaiah finishes his thought...”and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”  My sin-disease and personal culpability laid fully on Someone Else big enough to bear both– on Jesus, the one Isaiah said was “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter.” (Isaiah 53:7)

In the middle-gray land of March, halfway between death and life, there is time to hear the Love that calls us. And isn’t that what we all need here, when we are looking death in the face?…To see beyond its wretched ugliness and finality, into the eyes of the Beloved One, who carries our death on His own shoulders, lays it into the ground, and leaves it there? “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering…” (Isaiah 53:4) 

Here in the middle of Lent, the only way we will even be able to face the rubble inside is if we can also see Love’s glorious broken body standing in the middle of it.  “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)

And I have no defense against Love like this.

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Forty days, I am reflecting on my cross, my sins….Looking hard for release from this messy body of death. And there is Jesus. Jesus with a crown of thorns. Jesus bent low, God carrying my rotting mess, Grace doing what I cannot do, and I cannot ascend to God but He will descend to me….
Jesus will have to do everything. He will have to accomplish it all. I am ashes and I am dust and I am in dire need and Lent has given me clear eyes to see my sin and I am the one broken under all this skin.

Ann VosKamp

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We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes–
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest.
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets
when I think about the way
He loves us…
Oh how He loves us.

John Mark McMillan

On Prayer and Passion and Perseverance

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In the middle of Lent, and thinking about the Savior’s face set toward the cross. And all these burdens we carry seem so small and yet still so heavy, for they are all part of the same weight of sin in this world– the weight He carried for us, to do away with once and for all. Can we not have patience to watch and wait with Him in these long night hours, carrying our small pieces of His great burden, knowing that the Resurrection Day is coming soon? Because He has promised that there is beauty in His plans, and the redemption of all things.

The writer of Hebrews urges us to keep our eyes on Jesus, to watch our Champion and follow His example in both living and dying. He says plainly that this is our pattern and our privilege: “Because of the joy awaiting Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now He is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. Think of all the hostility He endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up.  After all, you have not yet given your lives in your struggle against sin.” (Hebrews 12:2-3) Who are we then, to be reluctant to trust God with our own circumstances? As if they were somehow more difficult, or we were more unique in our experience so that we could not pray with Jesus, “Thy will be done.”

In writing about trust, and the way Jesus prayed, a well-known preacher observed that “If we can’t say ‘Thy will be done’ from the bottom of our hearts, we will never know any peace. We will feel compelled to try to control people and control our environment and make things the way we believe they ought to be. Yet to control life like this is beyond our abilities, and we will just dash ourselves upon the rocks….to pray ‘Thy will be done’ is to submit not only our wills to God but even our feelings, so that we do not become despondent, bitter, and hardened by the things that befall us.” (Prayer, Tim Keller)

May we follow in Your footsteps toward the cross, Lord, lifting our trusting hearts up to You, along with whatever circumstances we are carrying. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)

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Walking around these walls
I thought by now they’d fall
But You have never failed me yet
Waiting for change to come
Knowing the battle’s won
For You have never failed me yet….
I’ve seen You move, come move the mountains
And I believe, I’ll see You do it again
You made a way, where there was no way
And I believe, I’ll see You do it again
Your promise still stands
Great is Your faithfulness, faithfulness
I’m still in Your hands
This is my confidence, You’ve never failed me yet.”

Do It Again, Elevation Worship

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Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.

1 Peter 4:12-13

‘Tis the Season

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There’s something about Spring that makes us want to shake off the old and paint everything bright and new. It’s a cyclical thing, this restless itch to take down the curtains and vacuum into corners and redecorate the bedroom. Fortunately, just noticing the recurrence of that effect keeps me from spending boatloads of money on re-doing the house every year. I really do like my home and feel comfortable in it, so I can content myself with a thorough cleaning and rearranging, knowing it is just the change of seasons at work.  But that inner energy is worth harnessing, can be useful elsewhere if I am not afraid to let it root into dark closets and throw up the shades on musty rooms of the soul.

I remember a youth pastor from the UK writing that the seasons of our life are valuable, even purposeful– orchestrated by God to do much-needed housecleaning in our minds and hearts. He pointed out that when circumstances change radically in the everyday, it forces us out of the mind-numbing routine, jolts us out of the ruts we tend to wear down into life. New seasons “awaken our spiritual values…challenge us with the realities of life and death…help us to look at our Christian commitment and connection…help us look at what God would have us do with our lives.” An energizing opportunity, if we can accept it for that.

The One who set the sun and stars in space and decreed that seasons change; the One who keeps the world turning in its place, and the miracle chain of life and death at work in sea and earth and sky– He is the One who holds my days and knows every one of them. Dare I believe that He marks this season of my life with just as much purpose and design? King David wrote it down: “How precious to me are your thoughts,God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand….” (Psalm 139:17-18) 

What if the season of life we are going through right now is God’s opportunity to speak to us, shake out the curtains and open up the closets of our hearts, set some issues of life and death before us? What is here for me to learn, in the busyness…or the solitude…or the seeking…or the pain? What do I need to grieve and let go of, so that something else can live? And what if all the painful digging up is only loosening the soil of my heart for something new to grow, shifting the boundaries of my little world to stretch it bigger? If I could open up the eyes of my spirit to see the Wind of change blowing through, could I catch a glimpse of His purposes for me, of what He wants to accomplish in me?

Lord, we rest in the faith that You are at work through every long Winter, and it will again pass into Spring. We hold on to the hope that Spring will come and new life will sprout under life-giving rain. Stir up our souls till we long for You to make everything new, in this season of life that comes from Your hand.

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Peace be still, You are near;
There’s nowhere we can go
That You won’t shine redemption’s light,
Our guilt withdrawn.
As You rise, we come alive;
The grave has lost, the old is gone,
And You’re making all things new…

Elevation Worship

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You, God, are my God,earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

Psalm 63:1

Of Grace and Second Chances

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Sometimes the circumstances of the past invade the Now before we even realize, padding in on the heels of a story, a song, a dream in the night, and suddenly the pain of yesterday is large as life right here, as if the clock had turned back when we weren’t looking. And what is there to do with something that can’t be changed and still cuts as deep as the day it was carved into our hearts?

One precious young sister said it quiet this week on the phone; “I try not to think about it, and maybe it will go away”– except I could hear in her voice that it doesn’t, and all the sweeping-under-the-rug just makes very large lumps in the Everyday. It made me ache with wanting to take that away for her, wash her slate clean for good….and I know how my own slate is marked up with things I keep erasing, until they surface again when least expected. It’s Grace that washes the past away, I told her, because Jesus came to carry that weight of shame, all our not-good-enough, that guilt over bad choices, the regrets that make us long for a do-over, only there isn’t one. And we don’t have to be stuck in our failures, with Jesus there, because He can make our hearts new.

Another friend wondered if she had made a mistake with her children, burdening them too hard with the stuff of life, and how do you even know until you’ve already seen the marks and it’s too late? My heart felt the weight of my own mistakes in mothering, all the things I wish I had understood sooner, and the trying so many wrong paths before I found better ways to do it. It’s Grace that works in our children where we can’t see it, I told her; Grace that makes up for our lack and fills in all the gaps in our understanding, and even if we never get it right, He is making all things good and right for our children in His own way.

Someone in small group shared the emotions she didn’t want to feel, said she had been carrying them long and was looking for something better. I fingered my own scars and it whispered through my heart again, that refrain of Grace taking up our past and all our ugly, Someone big enough to carry it Himself so we could be healed. It’s what He does, I told her– heals us on the inside where only He can see, and He knows what you are going through…it’s why He came for us. “Yet it was our weaknesses He carried; it was our sorrows that weighed Him down….He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-5) 

All this Easter week we hold up our weak and hurting places to You, God… our past and our secret places…all our fears and what-ifs, and the things we can’t quite forget or fix…we offer these to You and lay them down at the cross where Grace and Love pour out to make us clean and make us whole. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.'” (Jeremiah 29:11)  This is Grace healing everything broken and bent, because Jesus was willing to be broken for us. And there’s always a future and a hope where He is.

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By nature, God is always either creating or recreating.
He’s making something out of nothing, or He’s restoring what was broken. 

That is who He is. That is what He does. Forever and ever.

Sarah Bourns Crosby

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Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.

John 11:25-26

Endings and Beginnings

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As always, this change of seasons from Winter to Spring reminds me of the realities of life and death. Of the fact that Life has conquered Death and there is no more fear– just a change. It reads like a song: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)…. just a change from one season to the next, like the way the bulb’s green shoots struggle up through hardened dark earth into the sunshine of Spring. So death turns into life before our eyes in this one season, and we realize what a miracle Easter Sunday is, all over again. We need that reminder as we face the future, and hard seasons yet to come…that it is only one more change and then another, until at last it all turns into Glory.

I talk to the children upstairs in church about the holiday that is coming, and they tell me that what makes it special is candy and hunting for eggs. I loved that about Easter too, when I was four and seven. And the new hat and dress, and carrying the little matching purse. Big family dinner at Grandma’s house, and hunting for the baskets she had hidden for us that were full of candy. Mama’s hyacinths and daffodils lining up along the yard. All that is still Easter in my best memories. But now I am searching for words to explain why we celebrate Easter, and they don’t even know how much it means to have death swallowed up in Life, and grief turned to joy. For now they will have to accept “Easter is the most important day” as yet another mysterious grown-up declaration.

But those of us with older eyes watch the bulbs push their way skyward, and breathe in the scents of a world awaking into life, and we know it is a promise unfolding before us: death is not the end but only a change. Like the Church-planter wrote in one of his letters, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44) It is a declaration of victory that all this dust can change, become something new and better. Spring is our yearly reminder of the most important Easter Day, when Jesus showed us that Winter’s death was no match for God’s resurrection power, and He can bring life to all our dead places.

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When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’

1 Corinthians 15:54

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All around,
Hope is springing up from this old ground;
Out of chaos life is being found in You.
You make beautiful things;
You make beautiful things out of the dust…

BEAUTIFUL THINGS, GUNGOR

Up Abraham’s Mountain

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When Big-Brother James lays it out like he does, it is as plain as any road sign, and we’re all shaking our heads over how easy it is for us to lose sight of the simple Truth: faith and actions are entwined the way body and spirit are, and together they make up the life of a Christ-follower. Ignore either, and you are as lifeless as a corpse. It’s sad how in our sincere desire to be good we can detour off the path into wanting to be good enough or better than, until we find ourselves halfway up a useless tower with a hammer in our hands. It’s as if we’d never even heard the words of the ancient song, ” Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain…” (Psalm 127:1) And it’s just as likely that we will veer into a careless swamp of familiarity with Grace that lets us indulge our emotions, our desires, above obedience to God’s ways. James is warning us that both are the subtle bent of the Enemy. How tragically ironic that among the ranks of the gloriously Born Again there would be those who are walking dead and deceived.

No wonder Jesus can state unequivocally, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21) That may sound narrow-minded to modern ears, but He is only stating the facts, that you can spout all kinds of knowledge about God and build ministries that impress people, and still be dead as a doornail inside. Obedience that springs from a trusting heart is the only proof-positive of genuine faith. It’s as simple as that, and the signs of Resurrection Life in a person are that obvious: “… every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit….Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” (Matthew 7:17, 20) Big-Brother James challenges us to recognize fruit for what it is, and keep a close watch on our lives and on the Family of God in which we live. He warns, “Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom…”(James 2:12)

We might not be so surprised at the way real faith manifests itself, if we think back to the Beginning. Eve looked long at the beautiful fruit, and listened to what the Enemy whispered about it… let the doubts grow in her mind that maybe God was taking something good away from her, and maybe He did not have her best interests at heart, and maybe if she wanted to get what she desired she should reach out and take initiative, show herself strong and intelligent and capable of plotting her own course in life. She let emotion and desire grow large, and when she acted she revealed what she truly believed– what she was willing to stake her life on. But just because you stake your life on something doesn’t make it true, and even a woman made with God’s own hands can lose sight of His love. We’ve been following in her footsteps ever since, captive to our ancestry in both our living and our dying.

So James holds up heroes for us as examples of real faith; Abraham and Rahab both faced the same tangle of emotions that Eve had– the same strength of desire, the same confusion about God’s intentions. And like her, their choices also revealed what they truly believed, because they stepped out in blind obedience, trusting that His Words were true no matter what their circumstances were screaming. Abraham climbed up that mountain with his precious son and a bundle of wood because the God he knew told him to make the sacrifice. Rahab trusted a couple strangers to protect her family when the city fell because she believed in a God she did not know.

In their hearts, faith was both proven and strengthened by their choices to obey; in their actions, obedience was an offering of worship to God as Maker and Ruler. They declared Him powerful and just and righteous when they held onto His promises instead of their desires. They declared His glory when they valued Him over family and home and culture. They declared His right to rule by following when it didn’t make sense, by trusting the future to His plans. “And the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,’ and he was called God’s friend.” (James 2:23)

And isn’t that what Jesus did for us in His suffering? He came to earth in order to obey God fully– in every confusing and painful circumstance, against every opposition, in spite of every human emotion He had. He trusted hard and said “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (Mark 14:36) And He looked forward to our trusting obedience and the righteousness He was providing for us, and He called us friends who would follow His example. He proved once and for all that obedience is the best way– the only way– to demonstrate what we truly believe.

**For Abraham’s story, read Genesis 22; Rahab’s story is in Joshua 2.

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But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

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As I walk into the days to come
I will not forget what You have done
For you have supplied my every need
And Your presence is enough for me
Doesn’t matter what I feel
Doesn’t matter what I see
My hope will always be
In Your promises to me
Now I’m casting out all fear
For Your love has set me free
My hope will always be
In Your promises to me

Your Promises, Elevation Worship

But Still, Easter

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There is a pile of Easter candy here on the table that was meant to go out to children this happy Sunday. And a flowery Spring dress hanging in the closet. And I hardly know what to do with myself this weekend without a pile of music to learn, and cinnamon rolls to bake, and meals with family and friends. I keep going back to the strange thought that It doesn’t feel like Easter… and yet that isn’t right either, because Easter never was about all those extra things. Makes me realize how intertwined our own traditions have become with the ancient story. Maybe Easter is more real than ever, this year, with these trappings stripped away, so that only iron and splintered wood, blood, and old rough rock remain. At the center of it all there is truth, and I know the Resurrection story is more ruggedly real than any of the pastel Springtime fairy-tales we have woven.

Maybe that’s what these times of upheaval do best: they peel away the trappings of a busy life, to find what is real and true beneath it. We would probably never choose to step back for this long and examine ourselves and the choices we are making. But when the noise stills and the merry-go-round slows its whirl, there is no other option but to step off and look around at what you have built. It can be slightly terrifying, and an odd relief, all at once. I feel a little like the woman near a well in ancient Samaria, asking, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:15) There is no more distraction for the things that are broken, no more ignoring the disappointments we’ve been covering up, no more substitutes for the restless longing for something More. Just the need for real life-change. Somehow the Resurrection feels so much more ruggedly real when we are facing our own mortality– when I am vulnerable and small before the things I cannot control, cannot avoid. And the Church-planter writes with assurance that “The Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11) and I am trying to figure out what that means in the everyday mess and upheaval of this particular Easter.

That same Holy Spirit with the power to kill Death lives in my failing body. The same Holy Spirit who the Father sent to guide us into all truth lives with me here today. The Holy Spirit who Jesus sent to His disciples calls me a child of God and banishes fear. It is the same Holy Spirit who was in Christ Jesus, and the Church-planter Paul writes again that “…we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18) This is earthy, real, everyday miraculous stuff, and maybe it is good for us to peel away all the brightly colored shell of it and remember what is actually true. On that first Easter Sunday a body impossibly stepped out of its grave and suddenly new Life became a powerful reality.

If we step away from the busy-ness and the little pleasures and the many hats we wear, what is left is just the rough reality of who we are on this earth before our Maker. In these stripped-bare places we get to choose what we believe as real and powerful– whether to trust that the same Spirit who raised the Son of God can also resurrect our relationships…turn sorrow into joy… redeem our wasted time and give us second chances. And one young mom says how they have found healthy rhythms with a houseful of children by the grace of God, and it seems so right to have everyone together at home. And a friend writes that he has spent time alone with God this week dealing with hard things from the past, finding forgiveness and healing in the cross of Christ. And all around, people make the effort to reach out to the hurting with encouragement and hope. This is the power of the Resurrection at work in us.

It’s Easter weekend and the azalea bush out front has suddenly burst into wild purple glory fit for a king.

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So let the ruins come to life
In the beauty of Your Name,
Rising up from the ashes–
God forever You reign!
And my soul will find refuge
In the shadow of Your wings;
I will love You forever,
And forever I’ll sing.
When the world caves in
Still my hope will cling to Your promise;
Where my courage ends
Let my heart find strength in Your presence…

Glorious Ruins, Hillsong Worship

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I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

John 11:25-26

When Nothing Seems Certain

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The familiar path of Lent winding in and out of weeks toward Easter has led us into unfamiliar landscapes this year, and it’s easy to feel like we are suddenly adrift. But I open the curtains to greet a new day and the morning rains have soaked the ground again. Daffodils are pushing slim green stalks out of the ground and the birds are twittering in the puddles. The earth is coming alive around us, no matter what the Evening News said last night. It anchors my spirit, seeing how these simple things do not change…and maybe they are the largest most important things of all, because they are the foundations on which we stand.

This earth in all its complexity, springing forth from nothing at the words of a Creator God, is held in its rhythms day by day with the strength of His will, and all of us are born and die within its seasons. I can get wound up in the worries and needs of my own life, and forget the larger perspective. It is good for me to stop and look at the softening ground and the budding trees that continue to do what God made them to do, despite the growing stresses of human governments. It calms my spirit to remember that the Winter was turning to Spring without fail, long before I was born, and that my own seasons have come and gone through the years. Time will flow on– what presses so hard now will soon only be memory, and I will change and grow within its movement. This is truth that remains. The Musician-King said God wrote His name in the skies as a reminder for us: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth…” (Psalm 19:1) And isn’t this the purpose of Lent, to slow down and listen, pay attention to the truth woven into creation and remember that we were made to worship Him?

So today I remind myself that the days will keep counting down to Easter resurrection, and nothing can change the miracle that happened in that Garden Tomb so long ago. This is big-picture truth to hang onto, an unmoving foundation for our spirits no matter what comes into our everyday life. We cling to this promise, that “…He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you.: (Romans 8:11) Our lives are bound up in Christ’s death and resurrection, a miracle much too large to be affected by the shifting curves of statistics or the fears of what if. We do not know what the next months hold, but God does, and He is already working all things out. His song echoes down through the centuries, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10)

The grass is turning green this week under the grace of rain, and the Creator’s compassions are new every morning, as they have ever been. Easter is coming.

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Grander earth has quaked before,
Moved by the sound of His voice;
Seas that are shaken and stirred
Can be calmed and broken for my regard.
And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You;
And through it all, through it all
It is well…

It Is Well, Kristene DiMarco

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Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor My covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

Isaiah 54:10

Almost Spring

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Originally published on March 26, 2014.

Here in this season of Lent, instead of fasting and acts of self-denial, we are counting our thanks out on paper, feasting on grace. We are looking ahead to Easter and the resurrection, and rejoicing in the Giver of life.

And I find this to be true, that when eyes are wide open to see “Every good and perfect gift…from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (James 1:17), there is joy welling up that has little to do with visible circumstances. The Musician-King’s song echoes here: “You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11) Maybe not that we get some unspecified list of treats, as if we were spending the weekend with grandparents, but that the more we live in His presence, the more we experience the depths of His grace and goodness. No wonder the saints of long ago wrote down that the primary purpose of man was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever…getting to know an Eternal Almighty Being is liable to take forever, and the Psalm-Writer says it is all joy.

And you can tell, when you spend time with people, the ones who get this mystery of thankfulness, because the daily choice to recognize grace– when you name it in every little manifestation and offer your praise back up to the Giver– has a way of changing you on the inside. The daily discipline of humble thanks-giving stocks my Thought Closet with more of Him and less of me. Thankfulness chases away resentment and discontent, calms the spirit, focuses my thoughts on the things that are true and honorable and lovely, just like the Apostle Paul advised. He made that same connection between rejoicing and thanksgiving– said it should shape our lives and our prayers, promised good results: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)

So as we prepare for Easter and look forward to new life springing out of the ground into green, we go on counting, day by day, tuning our hearts to see the gifts around us, to sing God’s praises–and it’s like we are setting the cross of Christ in the middle of all our days. Because these many little blessings are only glimmers of that one great rugged signpost to grace, where God’s Passion made everything new.

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Speak to me…
You’re the only voice I want to hear.
Walk with me…
Show me who You are as I draw near.
If You’re not in it
Then I don’t want it;
Let all else fade away.
Take the whole world
But give me Jesus;
Let all else fade away.

Fade Away, Passion

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“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32)