On sorrow.

On this day, this happy and Holiest day, I cannot let go of the names and faces I know to have lost dear ones in the last two months. I think about the ones that wait for test results, healing and comfort. And I pray. 

I pray because I have no control over any of the aforementioned. None of us do. Our only power is an imperfect love, compassion and forgiveness. Community. 

The message of the resurrection has perhaps surpassed another message of triumph: that of the broken, mourning community of Christ awaiting a miracle, but largely having written one off. They were held together by their grief. In their fellowship, they bore a burden too immense to shoulder alone. With whom else could they safely nurse their wounds? In following the carpenter's son, they had left the comfort of friends and family far behind. Now, they had nothing to show for it. There was no  kingdom, no Divinity and no hope.

We will let go of loved ones before we are ready. We will uneasily await medical, financial and employment news. We will watch helplessly as our world turns upside down. We will need each other. We will stand at the edge of a crowd and long to be connected, not in any functional way. But as in a meerkat kind of way. We will need someone to stand watch so that we may sit, lie or hide. 

If we are fortunate, our hands and hearts will be held by another. Our burden will be lighter. The darkness will give way to light, not by any means of our own.  In an unmeasurable, unknowable span of time, the stone will be rolled away. The grief we knew to be there, the body we helped bury, will no longer exist. Long after the world thinks we ought to have gotten over whatever ails, we will remember. Like Him, we will always bear the scars. But, with mercy, we will eventually breathe again. We will fight the sense of betrayal and smile. We will laugh. 

And until then, we pray. We pray and plan to be fortunate. We plan to be fortunate enough to lift up and to be lifted. In that way, we celebrate the second miracle of the Easter story: when we held each other long enough to see that Life had come.

The Reconciliation and hope of Easter

Christianity does not call us to reconcile our lives to God's. That is the job of the Creator. He reconciles.  The Creator takes the created and bundles the heartbreak, the mess, the anger and the trivial into something Divine. The wonder and mystery of Easter is the voluntary yoking of our mess to the most physical embodiment of Deity the world had ever seen. Jesus 

Christ, a man who needed nothing of ours, who needed no spiritual lessons on forgiveness, humility, forgiveness and the quest of God, stepped into the story of humanity as a baby. He grew into a man, still harboring none of our baggage, and then in a supreme act of grace we do not deserve, died on a cross, beside the broken, for the broken, and assumed our mess. 

We like to define our sins. We list them. Greed, jealousy, adultery, murder, drunkenness, homosexuality. The list is long. And yet, there's this: what if all the law is  our human response to defining a God that is uncontainable and unknowable.  The ten commandments? A mortal's responses  to a divine encounter. Divinely blessed to be sure, as in the way we take our children's clean up efforts and say,"yes," but go behind them with a broom.  Because their efforts are important. They tie them to the vision, the process. 

 God reconciles with one breath. We show our work, as in a math problem. He does it in His head. 

He needn't show his work. The cross? That was for us. We needed the visual for the buy in. 

I often think about what is required to fully express my voluntary yoking of my messy life to God's vision. I go back to the basics.

 Deuteronomy 6:5-love the Lord with all my heart, soul and strength. 

Micah 6:8- do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. 

Mark 12:33- Not only will I love God, I will lovely neighbor as myself. 

Ephesians 6:4- be kind and forgive be another.

That is our yoking. When we live out the grace and mercy that has been poured into us, when we live out the call we hear in Christ,  we are marked as distinct. When we take the rest of the Law, it is because we desire a fence. There is no shame in a fence. It defines and guides our movements. I have a fence in my backyard, but not in my front. My neighbor to one side has none. My fence helps me define quarters for my dog and children, so that our freedoms do not encroach on our neighbor's right to the same. 

Law. Definition. Good things, that help me shape my life so that my footprint is small enough to allow God ample room to work in the world. The Law is not my tool to oppress, condemn and otherwise shame my neighbor. My voluntary fence does not exempt my Biblical call to love my neighbors and to really love them means I must know them. I must know them in their messy, uncontained, undefined struggling lives. I am to meet them, whoever they are, with whatever they have, whatever they wear, and with whomever they associate. Just as Christ my Brother, my Lord, met me. And then, and only then, if they decide any part of who they are does not allow them to comfortably follow God, then I may help them bring that burden to Christ. No questions. No judgments. No reconciliation. Because THAT IS NOT MY JOB! 

And so it's clear, I'm really bad at this. I'm impatient. I overplan. I try to structure the lives around me to my liking. I often fail to give God room to be Divine. I want God manageable, just like I want my spouse, my friends and my children. The manageable is safe and predictable. 

Holy week. Our mess reconciled, traded in for a chance to bring a living, resurrected

God to the ends of the earth. 

May God forgive me of my transgressions that I might be a better house for the most beautiful vision-  a full expression of His being of earth. 

May the peace, power and joy of the resurrection challenge us all to seek and know the Creator. 

On Biblical interpretations of marriage, sanctity of life and other sticky subjects

Until I've figured out how to cherish every soul I meet and willfully commune with the broken, worthless, arrogant, messy, sinful and downright different from anything I've been raised to acknowledge as a legitimate means to an end, I will refrain from placing my scriptural interpretations on your lives.  Even if I invest in another's life, I am not granted the ability to define sanctity or parameters. I am left only the privilege of helping to feed someone else's  children and family that they might know the same grace I do. Truly, I  have enough to worry about. If you've spent anytime examining my life, I'm sure you'll agree.  I am such a work in progress. 

Until I figure out both how to love my neighbors I won't bother defining their family. Until I wrestle the pre canonical texts of the disciples and figure out just how politically motivated that very messy procedure was, I think I won't stop seeking to better understand and know any person who will so bless me with snippets of their grace, their humor, their intelligence and their humanity. 
As far as I know, not a single instruction of Jesus meant that I could itemize the commandments for anyone else and the only ones He defined were that I should love God and people.  There are days, I would love an exemption. I'm tempted to pass judgement on every day that ends in Y, most days double dipping more than toddler.
While I'm at it, I don't do a lot on the age of earth stuff either. I'm here. Earth is big. There's a universe that's even bigger and a great big beyond that stretches out even further. My soul recognizes an unknown that I've sought to identify as long as I can remember, despite a whole lot of adult influence. I've been broken  and made whole in ways I'd be happy to tell any inquiring mind. I wouldn't dream of limiting the clock for the Author of time. It's a bravado I lack. I'm just grateful to be in the picture and hear the tick. The heartbeat of humanity is humbling.
Those of you that feel called to itemize and define any of the above, go right ahead. Knock yourself out. I do not wish my silence to be implied consent. If you need me, I'll be sitting at the sinner's table. It's the only one that had my name on it.