He is Risen

Good morning! We have hope today. Sorrow and mourning are banished, for today is filled with light and hope and peace. Our Savior came to us once, to save a dying world, and it is for this reason we remember that He will come again.

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ”

-Luke 24:1-7

Let us not fix our eyes upon death and this dying world, but on the Resurrection and the Life: Jesus Christ.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

-The Apostle John, 1 John 4:9-10

Tomorrow

Just a quick note to say I’m still alive. I’ve been in a dry patch for a while. Sometimes it’s just too much to think about all the time. God is still good, that hasn’t changed, I’m just weary right now.

A neat thing happened last week. I’ve been in need of a wheelchair to get around in certain situations, and during prayer at Bible study I felt I should ask for one. It isn’t a common occurence that I feel like God is telling me something specific He’s going to do, but I felt He was going to give me a wheelchair. I had planned on searching the Goodwills in town, but I went ahead and asked if anyone had a wheelchair they didn’t need. Within 5 minutes someone had produced a wheelchair, which had been donated to the church, from a closet and I got to take it home. It’s amazing that God cares for us in every need, just like Jesus says in Matthew 6:25-34:

  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Those last two lines really hit home. We don’t have to worry about tomorrow. Speaking of which, I’ll be seeing a rheumatologist tomorrow. It has taken two months to get this appointment, let’s hope it’s fruitful.

Update: I didn’t actually see the rheumatologist today due to insurance issues. I didn’t even get past the bouncer (read as: really nice receptionist). I’ve rescheduled with the hopes I can get things sorted before the new appointment. I’m discouraged, but at the same time I don’t know if he can really do anything for me, so time isn’t that big an issue.

Silence from Heaven

Why doesn’t God stop the pain? I think that, like so many relationships on facebook, “it’s complicated.”

Either God can not make these changes, or He will not. Often this thought process degenerates into a “God is either incapable or cruel” mentality which could not be further from the truth. There is of course the argument that evil and pain are necessary in order for free will to exist, and I’m not discounting that,  but let’s assume  that incapability is excluded by the definition of  ’God’ and focus on the latter option. Perhaps  God doesn’t answer some prayers because they’re inconsequential. We just don’t have the wisdom to see that they are. If God answered all prayers, there would be a lot more people who owned superbowl rings.* I used to pray that God would do anything to make me thin. After taking meds which make the thought of food so nausiating that it’s better to feel the pang of hunger and the stress of low blood sugar than eat, I woefully regret that prayer. If that’s the cost of being thin (for me) then that was a stupid request (not to mention superficial). I’m really glad God didn’t grant me that request.

Yet not all prayers are as trivial as personal accomplishment and vanity. There are selfless prayers for weighty matters. Beyond the fact that God understands pain and suffering far more than we could, perhaps even such prayers are peripheral. I don’t mean to make light of suffering, but while it may be all-consuming in the circumstance, it is but the blink in the eye of eternity.

Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic who was paralyzed in an accident as a teenager, prayed for deliverance or death many times, but in the end found herself saying:

I am actually excited at these opportunities “to suffer for His sake” if it means I can increase my capacity to praise God in the process. Maybe it sounds glib or irresponsible to say that. Yet, I really do feel my paralysis is unimportant.

-Joni Eareckson Tada, Joni

Jesus, also, recognized His desire for deliverance from the cross as inconsequential compared to God’s plan for good:

“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

-Jesus, Matthew 26:39b

Let me be perfectly honest, I hate what I’ve gone through, that I’m separated from the friends and community I had become a part of, that I’ve lost money, rank, and independence. I can’t sleep -as evidenced by the time I’m actually writing this post- and I’m in pain. I hate the fact I have to give up so much, but if this thorn is a tool in God’s hands, if I could encourage one person through my experiences or if one person could see the love of God that I see, I would cherish my thorn as if it were my own life. A thorn in God’s hands is greater than any pen or sword.

I’ve watched my dreams all fade away
And blister in the sun
Everything I’ve ever had is unraveled and undone
I’ve set upon a worthless stack
Of my ambitious plans
And the people that I’ve loved the most
Have turned their backs and ran

This is the good life
I’ve lost everything
I could ever want
And ever dream of
This is the good life
I found everything
I could ever need
Here in Your arms

Loneliness has left me searching
For someone to love
Poverty has changed my view
Of what true riches are
Sorrow’s opened up my eyes
To see what real joy is
Pain has been the catalyst
To my heart’s happiness

This is the good life
I’ve lost everything
I could ever want
And ever dream of
This is the good life
I found everything
I could ever need
Here in Your arms

What good would it be
If you had everything
But you wouldn’t have
The only thing you need

This is the good life
I’ve lost everything
I could ever want
And ever dream of
This is the good life
I found everything
I could ever need
Here in Your arms

-Audio Adrenaline, Good Life

*I’m using the term “answer” in the affirmative sense. I believe God does respond to all prayers, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between a “no” and waiting for a response.

There was Blood on Her Thorn

Her story resonates with me.

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

-Gospel of Mark 5: 25-33

We only see a snapshot of this woman, but she had a past which led to her actions. She bled for twelve years, suffering the subsequent effects of chronic anemia. She probably had some wealth to afford the many doctors who tried and failed to heal her. Her medical issue being beyond the physicians of the age, she lost everything. In that era, disability had not only physical, but social and spiritual implications. Her bleeding would make her “unclean,” preventing her from participating in religious rites. She would not be allowed to touch or be touched by anyone. Imagine the loneliness of twelve years without human touch. Physical isolation and poverty stripped her of social status, leaving her a beggar and outcast in society.

What mindset, then, did she have in approaching Jesus?  She could have been bitter and accused Jesus for the years He let her suffer. Instead, she recognized her need and acted in desperate faith.  She took a great risk in touching Jesus, for it would make Him unclean, so she touched Him discretly to avoid retribution.

Instead of her touch making Him unclean, His touch made her clean. After twelve years of isolation, her freedom came through touch. She instantly felt she had been “freed from her suffering.” Mark writes this account in the beautiful contrast of slavery and freedom. She suffered under the oppression of disease, and was freed.

Jesus called her daughter, removed her shame, and proclaimed that her faith made her free. In that moment of restoration, her body became whole. She was made clean, and could go to the temple to commune with God. She could again be touched and restored to her community.

Rags of filth
Sickest soul
Unclean isolation

Clothed in wealth
Faith made whole
Holy consolation

This is the gospel. We come with nothing, and through holistic transformation, gain everything at the feet of Jesus.

Love, Love, Love…

…and I’m not talking about the Beatles. I think it’s sad that we have so few words in the English language to communicate such a complex set of emotions. Love, love, love… is something that developed between me and my mom since just saying “love” didn’t seem to communicate the sincerity with which we felt it. I’ve noticed this has popped up a few other places, as if the word in triplicate means to say, “love, yes I mean love, I’m not messing with you, I really mean love.”

A couple years ago I started asking God to help me understand His heart, to see the world the way He sees it, and that my heart might ache for what His heart aches for.  In a strange way, my adventures with chronic pain have been a partial answer to this prayer. The experience you have when you hear words like pain, depression, loneliness, and disappointment is quite different depending on if you have felt those feelings. If you haven’t experienced these feelings, there’s a mental chain reaction: you intellectually connect concepts based on what you have learned about them. If you have experienced them though, there is a more visceral association made, even to the point of reliving that familiar feeling, which can produce a deep empathy.  This isn’t meant as a cut to sympathy, but it is an explanation of why I feel so strongly that we need to love others. I feel like I’m seeing with new eyes, like the world is coming into focus. I’m awakening to what’s going on around me, the struggles people go through emotionally, the poverty, the heart ache, and especially the elderly who are overlooked and treated as unimportant.

I’m not trying to guilt-trip anyone. I think we should apply what we know of the world to what we see. I pray that you and I can both see better than we do now, that we might hear the struggles of our neighbors, and let our hearts be receptive to the needs of others around the world. I know it can seem like such a huge task. I don’t think we’ll cure the planet and all the people in it of every ache, but with globalization we have the ability to both know what’s going on in the world, and make a difference. Just because the action of one person is small, does not mean it’s insignificant. So, as Christmas approaches, I would like to encourage you to look around and see how you can spread the love.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

-Jesus, John 15:12-13