Irrational August

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
—Madeleine L'Engle

It is no secret that I despise the month of August. The heat, the weight of work, the physical and emotional exhaustion, it all feels crushing... But this August has been especially hard to bear. In the span of a week, two of my oldest Summit connections were dealt death blows in their families: one lost their 17-year-old daughter, the other his 88-year-old wife just 12 days before their 66th wedding anniversary.

Now in the same span of time, I will attend two funeral services... One for a vibrant girl who was just about to begin adulthood, the other for a gentle soul full of humour and grace—both loved Jesus, and both loved people. It is no easier to go to one service or the other. Death is the great thief, thrusting itself into our safe worlds and snatching away those we love; snatching our security from under us. 

Death happens to other people. . .until it doesn't. 

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

—John Donne

As I pulled on my swishy black dress today, I reached for the right necklace to wear with it—the necklace with winter-bare branches etched in silver, my 'Aaron necklace'. It seemed the right thing to wear to Elsie's funeral. Elsie was a toddler when Aaron and I met. I've watched three families from that Semester lose loved ones too young. Stephen's brother was 27. Aaron was 30. And Elsie was 17. 

 Alice Noebel was also too young. Yes, she would have been 90 next year, but that's too young, because death isn't how it's supposed to be. And I know that Jesus turned death on its head, making it the gateway to the New Kingdom for those who believe... But it wasn't supposed to be part of this world. Not until one of God's image-bearers reached out her hand to take; to make the choice between tov and ra for herself. 

That is what we all do... In big or small moments, we decide for ourselves what good or evil are. And sometimes we choose evil, saying it is good—while eschewing the good, experiencing it as evil. Our stubborn choices bring various kinds of death and destruction. In relationships. In creation. In ourselves. Knowing the real difference between tov (good) and ra (evil/bad) is nuanced and complicated, and I for one don't have enough information about the future to know which thing is which. That's why we are supposed to depend on the Creator of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to help us discern. 

August is irrational, this one full of death and wounding grief beyond words. Perhaps the irrational part is that it also holds the bloom of love, bright and wild. Even in my own grief, I also know a love I've never known before. It is bright, illuminating. It is wild. It is both stable and hard to predict. And I experience this love as a sweet gift. On the surface it appears tov...  I pray for the wisdom from the Creator to know tov from ra, to open my hand to what He will place there in His time. It is so hard not to reach out and pluck what looks good and right. YHWH, give me wisdom and patience to wait on You. Help me to choose life, not death. Help me to see rightly what is tov. 

The Longest Lent

Lent began six months ago today.

Six months ago I was in a cool, dark sanctuary, listening to my vicar say "You are going to die." I didn't know how accurate that statement would be for this year. We rose, row by row. Ashes were traced across my forehead, I returned to my seat. We rose, row by row, again going forward—this time to receive the bread, the wine. In darkness we stepped into February chill. Ash Wednesday was the only evening Lenten service I got to attend in person this year. Not a single evening of Holy week was spent in that dark church sanctuary with fellow believers. We weren't present together in the darkness of Easter morning that bursts into light and noise and exuberant alleluias.

Oh, yes, I "attended" Holy Week services and Easter morning on-line. But that isn't the same—not even close. I haven't worshipped, truly worshipped, physically together with other believers for six months. It feels like the longest Lent in the history of the church calendar. It feels like Easter was an anticlimax or like it didn't even happen... Like it was swallowed up in the darkness, buried in the ashes of burned hopes, dreams, plans, businesses, cities, and people.

This weekend we will gather to remember our friend Mike Adams, who took his life in this season of darkness. He is a standout to me, because he is someone I know. . . But he is one among many. The number of suicides this year are, in some demographics, outpacing the number of virus deaths. Don't tell me this virus is killing people—I know it is—but the power plays surrounding the virus are killing more people in other ways, whether physically through suicide or because of division that makes one citizen stab another for not wearing a mask; or internally, spiritually, emotionally isolating us from one another. . . Keeping us apart at home, six feet away, cancelling events, or putting masks between our faces, stifling our expressions of vulnerability, kindness, concern, and even anger or fear. If no one can see our expressions of pain, how can they reach out to us? And are they afraid to hug us? If I can't see the look of loss on someone's face, how will I know "You too? I thought I alone knew that grief. . ." and be able to wrap them in love?

How do we invite others into our pain, into our sorrow, into our deep joys, into a place of hope, if we cannot be close, see the human expressions of these things across each other's faces? To be isolated while six feet away from someone—to be denied physical affection and warm greetings—is worse than being alone at home. It is the extreme loneliness of being alone in a crowded room. It is like the searing pain of being close to your lover, but being just unable to reach them, to touch them.

This season feels like birth pangs gone wrong, come too late. It feels like something is terribly wrong with the baby, it isn't moving. . . The thing we've been looking toward, the hope at the end of the morning sickness, the joy at the end of labour, the person to join our family has been snatched away, and we are left to bury our dead in isolated grief—with no hugs and no real place for grief or anger to go.

It feels like the longest Lent. But in the normal Lenten season we are together in our lament. We gather together to acknowledge that something isn't right. We encourage one another to take heart that the King is coming. We hope for one another, when someone can't hope for themselves. But this is isolation—not the solitude or quiet reflection of Lent—and it is the work of the enemy of our souls. Dividing, separating in every possible way.

Where is the hope? Where is the empty tomb of this season that has killed us in more than body? Where is the Easter morning coming out of this mourning? Where is the light in this darkness? Where is the King?

Maybe this horrible, longest Lent is in some way our taste of what the disciples felt when Jesus died. See, we know the end of that story, but they didn't. We know on Good Friday that Easter is coming. They didn't. And maybe this interminable Lent is our true unknown Good Friday and Holy Saturday. It is our season where we can't see what is happening in the spiritual realm. We can't see the Easter about to come.

Maybe we will die before we understand what it was all about, but we must know that Jesus will never be held down by death. Jesus will never be defeated by the enemy of our souls. Death and satan will one day be undone. The Kingdom will come in its fullness. And that won't be an anticlimactic Easter in the time of covid. It will be the greatest celebration of life and love and sacred community. . . It will be seeing face-to-face and still living.

Easter is coming. . .

Loving isn't gonna burn us out

Missing Aaron a lot tonight, so I picked up a letter of his from Easter ten years ago... Inevitably, he was quoting Switchfoot songs, which landed me somehow at the feet of this Jon Foreman song. The verses sum up my past four months, the chorus flooded in at Holy Week. 

Thank you, friend, for reaching out to me across time and space; for speaking truth into my life; for the flame of your love burning still. I miss you. So. Much.

YOU ALONE

My soul
Sing the one you know
Sing like a soldier
Whose hopes are running low
I fold
I'm giving up the ghost
I surrender any illusion of any semblance of control

You alone
You alone
You alone
Can heal my soul

It feels like you're running but
you're not getting nowhere
When did your fire get so cold?
It feels you're fading out
Into the jaded crowd
Look to the One who calls you Home

You alone
You alone
You alone
Can heal my soul
Come heal my soul

💔 Johanna

Through Lenten Lands

"Gurgling he went under, and the River closed over his curly head. An exclamation of dismay came from the empty boat. Frodo was just in time to grasp Sam by the hair as he came up, bubbling and struggling. Fear was staring in his round brown eyes. " 

~ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Gurgling. Spluttering. I come up for air like Samwise, fear staring wide out of my blue-green eyes. The year has surged forward like a massive, unlooked-for wave, knocking me into the eddying current with nothing to cling to but the empty air. Yet like Sam, an invisible hand grasps mine, pulling me out of the swirling abyss of my fears and the rush of time. The Anchor of my soul keeps me from drifting away completely, like Frodo pulling Sam into the boat on the Great River. 

I have most certainly fallen out of the boat, out of the rhythm in the dance known as the church calendar, since Epiphany. I came home and life capsized. One hardship after another has loomed up in the lives of my friends and family - hardships no one ought to have to face. Yet here they are, unexpected, unwonted. The river of time hurls me against the rocks along the bottom. Snap! I hit the end of the slack in the line between me and the Anchor: Ash Wednesday, the commencement of Lent. A rhythm. A season. A kedge. 

Ashes. How strange that a season which begins with ashes ends in resurrection. The Resurrection is the true myth of the Phoenix rising from the ashes. That snags my attention. I crave the hope of new life from the sooty shards of many things: marriages, friendships, cancer, hopes crushed, and the like. I feel the sweeping motion of a cross rubbed on my forehead and the Rector reminds me, "Remember that thou art but dust, and to dust thou shalt return." This reality bites deeply today, as tomorrow I will walk alongside a companion whose mother died on Friday. 

Another Friday in history, death claimed its greatest defeat: the Son of Man, God Himself. But that Friday was followed by Sunday, when the teeth of death were uprooted by the Resurrection and the Life. Our resurrection Sundays are multi-fold, as we are brought further and further into life. The more we die to self, the more we are fully alive. When everything we know is engulfed in raging flames, we are further refined. We are given cleansing and forgiveness through the ashes. 

God offers us an incredible trade, Give Me your ashes and I will give you My Beauty. He always takes the 'losing' side - giving us priceless gifts in return for our brokenness, broken promises, and broken hearts. He promises to take the penalty if we break the covenant, though that is completely unheard of in covenant making. He gives us good gifts when all we have to offer is broken and marred. He clothes us in His Beauty when our grubby hands are full of cinders.

Closing my eyes I feel the cross traced on my forehead. I taste the wafer and the wine. These are more than icons, more than shadows. They are real acts, real elements that remind me of the reality that death has been, IS, defeated. Reminding me that all the burned up dreams, hopes, and relationships we are experiencing, are the ashes from which God's glory will rise. As my very dear friend said last week, "When the breaking is deeper than we think it can be, [God's] redemption must be deeper still." 

~ Johanna

Come Speak in Joy Untamed and Wild

Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come 
In Your fearful innocence. 
We fumble in the far-spent night 
Far from lovers, friends, and home: 
Come in Your naked, newborn might. 
Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come; 
My heart withers in Your absence.

Come, Lord Jesus, small, enfleshed 
Like any human, helpless child. 
Come once, come once again, come soon: 
The stars in heaven fall, unmeshed; 
The sun is dark, blood’s on the moon. 
Come, Word who came to us enfleshed, 
Come speak in joy untamed and wild.

Come, Thou wholly other, come, 
Spoken before words began, 
Come and judge Your uttered world 
Where You made our flesh your home. 
Come, with bolts of lightning hurled, 
Come, Thou wholly other, come, 
Who came to man by being man.

Come, Lord Jesus, at the end, 
Time’s end, my end, forever’s start. 
Come in Your flaming, burning power. 
Time, like the temple veil, now rend; 
Come, shatter every human hour. 
Come, Lord Jesus, at the end. 
Break, then mend the waiting heart.”

— Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season

This might be my favourite poem of Madeleine's L'Engle's. I like it so much that all I can say is that you should read it at least three times. Ready? Set... Go.

On the First Day of Christmas...

Sitting around your table
As we did, able
To laugh, argue, share

Bread and wine and companionship, care

About what someone else was saying, even

If we disagreed passionately: Heaven

We're told is not unlike this, the banquet celestial,

Eternal convivium. So this praegustum terrestrium*

Partakes – for me, at least – of sacrament.

(Whereas the devil, ever intent

on competition, created the cocktail party where

One becomes un-named, un-manned, de-personned.) Dare 

We come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?

Yes! Around your table we

Knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless

The food, the host, the hour, the willing guest. 

 *Foretatse of the land {The new earth, perhaps?)

~ The Irrational Season (pp 158-159)

Madeleine L'Engle wrote the above poem at a friend's home one evening... I wish she had written it at my home. Partly because I have learned so much from her over the years, but also because I want my home to be like that. 

I want meals over my table and tea with friends in the living room to be the soul-ish bread and wine that strengthen the inner man. I want my cottage to be a home, not merely a shelter from the rain or biting winds. I want my little 'Hobbit hole' to be cosy and cheery and uplifting as soon as someone steps inside... Because it is comfort, warmth (both literal and figurative), and personal attention that create a safe place to share one's soul, to be vulnerable, open, and free. It is a warm mug of tea and a listening heart that the Holy Spirit uses to bless both the speaker and listener. This is is feeding the hungry – both in body and in spirit. This is hospitality. This is friendship. 

This is the incarnation... Because when God came to us, He sat at table with sinners and tax collectors. He saw the multitudes and had compassion on them. He felt the touch of one desperate woman in a throng of persons. When God became man He spoke to women, had time for children, and built men up in their masculinity. The man who was God became rightly angry over apathy, avarice, and arrogance against God. He cared so much that He flipped over tables in defense of God's Holiness. And He still cares to the point of action. He cares enough to die for us. Enough to walk with us through our sorrows and longings. Enough to chasten those who are His children. Enough to keep reaching out His arms to a stiff-necked and disobedient people - again and again. Enough to let persons taste the consequences of their sins - because redemption's price is high.

We see what God in flesh is like when we turn the leaves of the New Testament, and we have the great gift of knowing the Messiah has come. We have the communion of saints round the table, walking through life together.  

Dare 

We come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?

Yes! Around your table we

Knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless

The food, the host, the hour, the willing guest.  

May this be said of me, and you, and every other Christian... That we are marked by the Love of God, for the world to see. May the Holy Spirit walk with us and amongst us always, making us more and more like the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas!

~ Johanna

If God is with us, why are we lonely?

"Our two little granddaughters have a sense of community which many adults have lost; people have developed less a sense of community than a loneliness which they attempt to assuage by being with other people constantly, and on a superficial level only... The loneliness, the namelessness of cocktail-party relationships surround us. We meet, but even when we kiss we do not touch. We avoid the responsibility of community."   

       ~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season
(pg 182, emphasis mine)

There is a steady song of rain on the eaves, the dimpling of ever-widening puddles in the yard by so many hundreds of thousands of droplets. For me, the grey skies and the heavy rain are a comfort, a friend inviting me to listen to their story, a warm mug of tea in hand. For many, though, the slashing rain and slate-coloured sky are dull and dreary. The dark of night is not a quieting friend, a place to be still and ponder, but an unwelcome enemy: loneliness. 

Loneliness and Christmas go hand-in-hand in our confused culture. Stress, blow-ups, and annual arguments are many persons' only Christmas traditions. If you are honest, you probably find loneliness and stress normal rather than shocking. Our lives do not match up to "Christmas: Hollywood style." When 26 December rolls around, we still live in a draughty house, the scroll-work on the bannister still comes off in our hand, and we are still working at the Bailey Building and Loan Company rather than travelling to Tahiti or going to college. 

Perhaps It's A Wonderful Life, more than any other Christmas film, shows what does make 26 December different, in spite of life circumstances remaining the same: community. George Bailey is given a new perspective to see that the people in his life love him, are willing to give their money --and still more, their prayers-- for him because he is part of their community. George has given his time, his own money, his hopes, his dreams, his whole life to the people of Bedford Falls. At his hour of need his neighbours do not leave him high and dry, they give out of their meagre store. Not only is his community built of those neighbours, there is also a heavenly community that he is part of, too. 

Though 'community' is a buzzword, particularly in churches, our culture knows little of it. That is why loneliness is more familiar to us than community. That is why we can sit at a long table of friends and feel completely isolated. Community is not 'being with other people constantly' - it is being with other people. It is being silent with them or crying with them when loss comes. It is walking with them through the burned out rubble of their home, or the shattered pieces of their marriage. It is feeling awkward and useless when you do not know what to say about a friend's difficult situation, but hugging them anyway. It is making the most of the time you have with a friend who is moving away, seeking to sweeten the loss before it comes. It is giving the shirt off your back, the food out of your fridge, the money out of your bank account to serve another. It is opening your home for dinner, conversation, laughter, hugs, and tears. It is reading together. It is sitting on the floor, huddled by the heater in the arctic cold of winter, just talking. It is receiving help and encouragement whilst climbing a mountain, and turning around to give your hand to that same friend when the rocks at the top are too hard to climb alone. 

That is community, is it not? Not letting someone climb alone. It is instead walking alongside others, being encouraged by those ahead to come "Further up, and further in." It is repeating that cry to your companions, and to those on the path behind you. Community is being responsible for one another - even when it means paying someone else's debt, or bearing their sorrow, or sharing their sweaty, infected smell. And it means receiving love, healing, help, and grace, too. It goes back and forth, constantly.

At the time of year when we remember that Jesus Himself left the community of Heaven to wear our smudge and share our smell, how can we feel alone? Yet we often do. 'The-day-after-Christmas' of our whole life feels devoid of real community, we do not even know where to look for such a thing. All we see is a black gulf of loneliness that never seems to change, no matter how many parties we attend, or evenings a week that we are busy. I speak as one who cannot give easy answers to loneliness. I spent many years as a child and young adult without close friends. I found myself feeling alone at a crowded table recently. But those are moments I have also found that the LORD has not left me. He whispers, sometimes shouts, to me in those moments that I am loved with an everlasting love. And I feel spoiled... Because I often find myself laughing until I cry over games with my adopted 'roommates'. Or laughing with my work friends and neighbours at a gingerbread shack that will not stay together, in spite of much 'gluing' with icing. I find myself blinking back tears of humility at how much I am loved and included by so many others.

You are not alone.

God is with us, Himself...and as He is revealed in His saints. Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He!

~ Johanna

"Words, Words, Words." (To Quote Shakespeare)

[Advent: Week 3]

"When Hugh and I went on a trip to Russia I almost didn't get a visa because our travel agent put down my occupation as writer. Writers think. Writers ask questions. Writers are dangerous. She finally persuaded 'them' that I write only for small children and was not a threat. In any dictatorship writers are among the first to be imprisoned, and vocabulary is quickly diminished and language deteriorates.  Writers, if their vocabulary is not leashed, are quick to see injustice, and rouse the people to do something about it. We need words with which to think; kill words and we won't be able to think and we'll be easier to manipulate."

~ Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season (pg 164)

As I read this section of The Irrational Season today, a chill went through me. Madeleine L'Engle lived through WWII, Viet Nam, and the Cold War. She saw the devastating effects of tyranny, and what methods dictators used to cause them. We see that still, in China, North Korea, parts of the Middle East, and many other places where there is little or no free speech. In such places the oppressed do not know what is going on in the outside world, they are kept in the dark through force and propaganda.

Yet there is a different sort of tyranny running rampant in the 'free' West - the tyranny of disappearing words. We have heard the adage that talk is cheap, yet are still hurt and offended by various sleights, snubs, and insults. Sticks and stones might break our bones, but we all know that words spoken to us in vulnerable moments (childhood especially) may leave lasting scars. Our sneaking enemy bombards us with so many words each day that their meaning and weight is weakened. Advertisements and billboards, e-mails and printed leaflets and newspapers, words flashed on television screens, iPads, iPods, and other electronic devices. We can now communicate quickly with anyone in any part of the world, but our whole world aches with the loss of community. Our Western society is losing the ability to articulate as words like"selfie" are added to the dictionary, but even bright persons no longer know what 'widdershins' means; or they say words like 'impactful' in place of a real word like 'impacting' or 'meaningful.' 

Our insidious enemy, the State, is not removing words from dictionaries as much as they are removing them from circulation and common vernacular. Thus, the minds of the public are weakened. But words are strong. They can augment or crush. Words are the death of us in the throes of an argument. Or words can be life and hope breathed into us in a genuine compliment or observation. If we understand the power of words we can share ideas and ideals, vision and Truth. We can paint the canvas of the mind with vivid sunrises and sublime mountain ranges. Yet we can only do this well if we have the subtle colours provided us via a large vocabulary. Vocabulary is to the writer what the toolbox is the carpenter, or the palette is to the artist. Without the fine chisels or minute brushes, the artisan is unable to inlay the wood or paint delicate subtleties in his work. Without a vast wealth of words, the writer loses clarity and sharpness in his writing. Without a vast array of words, communication is fuzzy at best, muddled and hollow at worst. 

Even when the writer has the word bank needed to clearly communicate, his audience also needs a grasp of language. The reader must possess a desire to look up unfamiliar words in order to receive clarity and insight. He must, even before that, be willing to read. We live in a culture where we are too lazy to even read a blog post if it does not have photos with it; or where a magazine article, sermon, soundbite, or news clip has been made as brief as possible to retain the viewer's or listener's attention. We are sliding into the ground where we begin to lose context and perspective because we have shortened everything. The media overloading our eyes and ears and brains has shortened our attention spans. We can no longer listen to a speech three hours long, or spend the whole 4th of July listening to speeches, recitations, and singing. 

We want more action, more multi-tasking, and the rush of information, because we do not know what to do with silence. But the more information transmitted to us, the less meaningful it is. Sometimes an idea or a word is underlined best by minutes or hours of silence. Sometimes we have to stop reading so fast to look up an unfamiliar word in order to gain greater insight. The goal is not simply to finish a book, it is the be led out of ignorance and into Truth. 

We need words to be alive -- because at one tangible point in History, the Word Himself was made man and dwelt among us. He shrouded Himself in this fleshly body of death to bring us new Life. Words matter vastly in reality. It is by words that God spoke all that we see, smell, hear, sense, and know into existence. It is through the Word enfleshed that we are given the hope of stepping through the portal of death into the really real world of the High Countries. It is that Word that is making us less and less shadow-men, and more and more into solid creatures. Words are life - The Word is Life. The Word is the substance of Hope. That final Word of God is the Prince of Peace. Let us not rush past that Truth into vague and insipid thoughts and 'communication' (i.e. electronic exchanges in place of face-to-face meetings) this Advent. Let us listen to the Word when He says, "This is the way, walk in it." Let us ask questions. Let us live dangerously. Let us live.

~ Johanna

The Icon Tree

"...Indeed the only way in which I can make real to myself what theology teaches about the heinousness of sin is to remember that every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us - an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof 'God did it' and 'I did it' are both true descriptions. 

We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege."

~ C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer

Fog renders the foothills out my window nearly invisible this morning. In much the same way, sin renders the good thing from which it derives existence unrecognisable, incomprehensible. There is so much good in the things God made, because He made them, and He is goodness itself. Yet when we take a good thing and turn it on its head, it becomes vile, wretched, utterly broken. Lewis chooses well when he says that sin is sacrilege. Sacrilege is defined as a "crime of stealing what is consecrated to God." Indeed, that is what every sin is; stealing God's glory, or God's good thing and using it to satisfy our cravings, to harm others, or turning it into an idol.

God is greater than our sin, more imaginative and redemptive than our corruption of His good things. All we can think to do is twist something good into cruel, sick, selfish means to our own ends. God, however, creatively, completely, redeems brokenness. He turns the Fall upside down in the most ludicrous and paradoxical ways.  The God of the universe, Creator of all things, becomes part of the creation,  dwells inside the universe. He Who could not sin, became sin itself in order to make us the very righteousness of God. When the first Adam failed to obey, the Second Adam fulfilled the Law in spirit and in truth. When we could not atone for our sin, the blood of the perfect Lamb was shed in our stead. Who is this King of glory?

This King of glory rode into Jerusalem one day to the shouts and praises of His people. They shouted words to the effect of, 'Save us, O King!' that day. Less than a week later they screamed, 'Crucify Him, crucify Him! His blood be on us and our children!' And what was condemnation for this demand, was turned right side up. Rather than guilt and culpability remaining on those who appealed for Jesus' blood, that same blood was upon them, to cover all their sin. Rather than covering their hands in blood, Jesus offered to sprinkle them entirely to remove their condemnation.

Often Christians will say this all took place on the cross. After all, that is where the blood was shed. But many innocent men have been killed (though no other sinless men have been executed), how does the bloodshed of an innocent man save anyone? Partly it is because Jesus was sinless and took the penalty we all deserve and He did not. The wages of sin, the payment for sin, is death. So Jesus died on the cross, that image we see throughout the ages in churches, on necklaces, on wall art, and more. So He paid a debt that we owed and could not pay. So what?

This is where many Christians miss the mark. Too often we stop at the cross, we end the story on Good Friday, and Jesus is still in the tomb. What I love about Eastertide is that it is the co-mingling of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day. The fact is that the tomb is empty, and the One Who formerly occupied it had the authority to defeat death.  In fact, He had the authority to declare to those chained in darkness that He had won. 

The cross is no icon of hope at all if the empty tomb is not set beside it. The cross does not tell the whole story -- not without remembering that the cross is empty and the tomb is empty because Jesus is alive.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!"

 ~ Luke 24:5b-6a

Let me encourage you not to turn the very cross of Christ into an idol. We do this when we do not tell the whole story, when we forget the risen Christ. 

Let the cross instead be an icon to us. An icon is a real object that reminds us of a historical or spiritual truth. Let the wine be drunk physically to remind us of the blood shed to save our bodies and souls. Let us bow to the cross because it reminds us that Jesus is our King, and we must revere and honour Him. Let us delight to be where the Composer has placed us in the melody of His symphony. Let us look at the scarred tree, the paintings of the scarred hands and feet, and be reminded that He was pierced  and wounded for our lust, anger, pride, and over desire. Let that empty icon tree remind us to seek the living Jesus.

Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He!

~ Johanna

The Irrational Season

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

There'd have been no room for the child.

~ Madeleine L'Engle

I live in a community of persons who have spent at least two weeks of their lives immersed in ideas, reason, knowledge, and facts. This is wonderful for helping others understand Christianity from a historical and reasoned perspective.  It can also put up barriers for persons who need to know that God is not just 'out there' ruling the universe, but that He cares about us right here.

Reason is a lot like the marriage covenant, even when you do not feel like loving the other person, you have promised to do so. In the same way, even when your emotions tell you conflicting ideas about who God is, your understanding of historical events,  textual criticism, logic, et cetera help to anchor your soul.

We all know people who try to reach God by reason, or by following a set of rules. They want to get at God from the outside in, rather than letting Him work from the inside out. God works from faith toward reason. Being a Christian is not following myriads of regulations. Being a Christian is not about feeling happy, nor about feeling good because we are doing good things. Christianity is not based on blind faith, there is an astounding amount of evidence for God's existence. Christianity is not naked reason, either, because we are not mere minds. We are persons with bodies, souls, and spirits.

Had Mary been filled with reason

There'd have been no room for the child.

The Child. Christianity is not simply faith, nor not solely reason, because it is not a religious system. The person Jesus Christ is the heart of Christianity. The God of the universe, Jesus Christ, is at the heart of Christianity. This Child is both God and man. Both infant and infinite. Christianity is both rational and personal.

This is the irrational season
When Love blooms bright and wild.

~ Johanna