Betrayal

I hit a rebellious streak in high school.

Oh, not completely, outwardly rebellious.  Just trying to live two ways.

I wanted good grades and leadership positions and positive friendships and esteem from my elders.  I also wanted to be loved and seen as beautiful and cool and worldly wise by my peers.

It was hard to keep up both.  I would feel elated while in a new relationship where someone valued me, but then I would have to hide that relationship from my parents.

I loved being president of our FFA chapter, but then would do foolish things with my companions at the fair.

During this season, I had a conversation with my friend J that I think of often.  It was actually  a turning point in my life.  We were driving in a car around a right angled bend in the road on a blustery day.  Turmoil must have been festering in my heart over who I was and what J and I were regularly about, and I spewed out my struggle:

I told her I'd been thinking that there probably wasn't a God.   


That's all I said.  Twenty-three years later and I still think about it.

My statement catapulted me into a sphere I never would have imagined going.  Because saying it out loud forced me to reckon with my fraudulent choices and behavior.  I instinctively knew I couldn't keep living two ways.

The only way to find stability was to choose God or no God.  I tried to choose no God.  But I couldn't.  Once those words left my mouth I knew there was no way I could believe it, and no way I could live it.

I knew I'd betrayed my Creator and my Savior and I was haunted.

God met me in the haunting.  He met me in my desire for love and acceptance.  He patiently and mercifully wooed me to Himself.

I used to wonder what my life would have been like if I'd determined to live and believe my statement to J.  I know it would look vastly different and most likely very dark.

Today I wonder where I'd be if I hadn't ever said that God didn't exist.  Would I be trying to live a double life still?  Would I be living in a constant state of guilt and turmoil I wasn't meant to bear?  Maybe this sort of life would be darker and uglier than life without God at all.

My statement became a gift to me.  It clarified my choices and ultimately brought me to a sincere relationship with Jesus.

Was Peter's betrayal also a gift?  Had he not betrayed Jesus those three times as Jesus was standing trial, would Peter have known himself and known his true beliefs about Jesus?  Would he have become the Rock of the church, the leader of the apostles, and defender of the faith without it?

Daily God is faithful to continue His work in growing me, meeting me,  and showing me who He is and who I am.  Daily I work to remain open to His leading, His teaching, and His mysterious ways.

It is a completely imperfect life, based on one perfect choice:  Jesus, the Author and Embodiment of Perfection, Love, and Truth.

If you haven't made the choice to seek God and His ways in all of your life, why not today?

Happy Easter!

He is Risen!!!

He is Risen, indeed!!!

He said to them, 

"Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds?  

Look at my hands and my feet.  It is I myself!  

Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

Luke 24.38

A Blessed, Happy Easter To You!

Our Easter Photos

"We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

"He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth;"

"he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth."

"To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb"

"be praise and honor and glory and power,"

"for ever and ever!"

Text taken from Isaiah 53: 6-7 and Revelation 5:12

Photos of our family visiting an orphan lamb, nailing sins to our Christmas tree trunk cross, and having a community Easter egg hunt.

Exposed

 It's the season of birdsong.
As the birds fly through or settle in, they bring their voices and delight my ears with their natural calls.

The other day as I was out jogging I stopped to watch one that caught my ear.  I think I have the call down as well as I'm able...cheeep, cheeep, cheeep, cheepcheepcheepcheep, ahgggggggcheep!
I laughed each time I heard the ahggggg!

The great thing about early spring is that a large part of the time I can also SEE the bird. The trees are not full of leaves yet and if I look, I can figure out which bird is singing the song.

I travel back in time this week, trying to feel the passion of it all.  Jesus hailed king as He came to Jerusalem. The disciples knowing this was a dangerous mission...following Him though they thought they might end up dying with Him.

He'd told them over and over what was going to happen:

"We are going to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.  They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.  On the third day he will be raised to life!"  Matthew 20.18,19

So clear, yet the tree was covered with foliage and they could not really see.

It was dark, so dark, as they followed Him into Jerusalem.  He was preaching to the people in the temple courts, raising Lazarus from the dead...and the climate was dripping with suspense.

He knew.  They didn't.  They had heard the song, but couldn't see the source.

Fears became reality and Jesus was arrested, accused, tried, condemned.

He was exposed, hung near naked, flesh torn open, elevated for all to see.

In that clearness of exposure I have a choice to see Him for who He is.

God.
Made man. 
Choosing to save humanity from ourselves.

My response, "Yes, expose me, too, Jesus.  For who I really am: soul-stained with sin, body full of fault."

"Cover me, wash me, clean me with Your powerful grace and mercy."

"So that You become exposed in me, too.  My words a song of hope, my life a clear reflection of Your peace."


photos:  third annual trip to Daffodil Hill; this time precious friends joined us

Using What I Have

For a couple years now I've been saving magazines and catalogs.  Cooking, decorating, kid, clothing.  It's become quite a stack.

They're stored in a blue crate near the craft supplies.  So as to promote creativity and self-expression when someone wants to put together a collage or something of the sort.

It's been two years and they haven't been used.  They've only increased in number and begun to overflow in the crate.  Until this week.

Two of the boys noticed the magazines and decided to try and stuff them all into a cardboard box.  They crammed nearly all of them in, and then left the box in the middle of the walkway.

A walkway we move through constantly during school.  Almost instantly I decided they must be recycled today.  I tried to lift them, remembering the rules for lifting heavy objects.  But as I began to carry them away the children protested.

These unused magazines suddenly held hidden treasure.  They were appalled at my plan.

We made a compromise.  Each child got to pick one magazine, the rest we give to Mr. Recycle Bin.

This week they've engrossed themselves in the pages, making up stories of the different people in the photos, sharing snippets of ideas with each other, marveling over the man's strong muscles in a work-out ad.

And I, beginning Lent with a fast, decide to put to use my own magazines.  Those promises mine for the taking.  The power within ready for the asking.

There's Moses and David, both nearly losing God's presence with them, begging for Him to stay.

There's me, looking around at the treasure I have, not wanting to let it set by unused, but employ and marvel at what's mine all day long.

...And if you're looking for a couple simple ideas on celebrating Lent with your family, I put a few together over at my cool cousin's blog...

Seeing Clearly

"I saw you early this morning, more weary than the centuries since Abraham--since Adam.  My heart broke.  I said, What is he thinking?  Does he love me now?"

Those lines keep returning to my mind this day they call Good Friday.  How He, Who was before Adam, chose to go through torture and beyond.  For everyone.

It was hard, when I read with the children, and was explaining to them what it meant to be scourged.  And my chest lumped up as I pictured His back.  Then how they put a crown of thorns on His head and I picture the piercing thorns point inward to His human brain.  I didn't want to keep on reading.

Worst was the mocking actions, putting a purple robe on Him in His wretched state and pretending to worship.  It is too much.  Awful, horrible, downright wrong.  And I don't want to read it.  Think on it.  Look at Him.

But I do.  I look at Him.  See Him in His pain and vulnerability and absolute weakness.

Because looking at what He did and still does for me frees me.  Gives me clear sight.

This morning I sat at the optometrist's with dilated eyes.  No contacts or glasses and all looked like trees.  I talked with a woman and her two year-old but I didn't really know what they looked like.  Just blurry blobs of tree.

But this day, this awful, awesome day.  It restores sight to my eyes.

For in seeing Him, in receiving His gift of being crushed for my sin, I am healed.

Healed to see life clearly for what it is.

We take the Christmas tree trunk and saw it in two.
We take a nail and drive the pieces together.

And I see His pain.  And I see His gift.  The gift of the real me, rebirthed by His death.

Quote taken from Reliving the Passion by Wangerin, Jr., p.136,  book photo of three of our favorite Easter stories.