Easter Monday

I slept too late. I didn’t get done what I wanted to get done by this time. I tend to have all these grand plans of what I would like to accomplish that are usually beyond the capacity of any human being. But I still have them for me.

This morning I just sat and thought. For about an hour. It was one of those lawn mower moments. I used to mow the field of my grandpa’s old cottages out at the lake - it was a good-sized field - and I would think. I think it was one of the first times in my life that I had an extended period of time to just think about life and took advantage of it.

You can get the same feeling when driving for long stretches through sparsely populated sections of our U S A. Driving in urban environments will of course induce the opposite sensation, but those long thinking times are usually associated with movement for me, trains, cars, planes, lawnmowers, whatnot.

I didn’t really do much moving this morning. Well, actually, I guess I kept getting up out of my chair and looking out the window for no particular reason. Like I was waiting for the mailwoman to arrive with a package that contained a really great thought. Or an advertisement for the new Chinese place down the street that provided a particularly striking insight. Maybe a coupon for 2 dollars of my next carwash will really clear up things for me.

Some days it’s easy to get up and go out and do things. Other times, its nice just to sit. No one ever really has that luxury though. Except that I’m on vacation today. I’m on a vacation from my worries like in “What About Bob?” Actually today is the last day of my Easter break. ]

Easter. And who really cares? If any day should be “different” I suppose Easter would be it. Now today is Easter Monday, but still, It’s Easter and who cares. Every year another Easter passes and I‘m still the same human with the same flaws, which seem to be growing more apparent rather than slowly ebbing into the night.
Hate, bitterness, despair, envy, jealousy, desire, and rage are all still here. Are people still the same? Is the world still the same? It’s not getting better? The same? Worse?

I guess I’m not supposed to live as one without hope.

Some hope in the world. I hate, loathe and despise these people at best.

Some hope in the rapture. I lampoon, mock, ridicule these people even though I am of the same family.

I do have a promise of new life. I have a promise of a restored body. And of a life that will not end. I have a promise that I will be with God in an amazing and indescribable place.

But some days the hope is hard to find, to grasp, to believe, to take a hold of. The Scriptures appear to be a jumble of words. Prayer feels like I am talking to my ceiling rather than to the maker of heaven and earth. That’s how I feel. Like God is ignoring me. Life is a grind. Why continue to grind through life day after day when you will be laughed at for believing the unbelievable and dedicating yourself to apparent fiction. Why slog though the muck of everydayness when you are lumped with ignorant and simpleminded fools who disgrace God, scripture, America, themselves and me with their legalistic, uneducated, emotive, lunatic ravings about their truth?
You can give in to the world. Chuck truth and refuse to ruffle feathers.
Then Christ is optional.

There is truth. And my ranting about it will probably come off as equally legalistic, uneducated, emotive and insane as those brothers and sisters of mine that I despise, but that’s all I’ve got. I don’t have anything to add to the world that hasn’t already been said. I am not going to invent, uncover, unearth or reveal anything has hasn’t already been here for ages. I do have a loud voice though. I can make it heard. I used to sell peanuts and Angel games and half the stadium could here when I called. Some would clutch their ears and writhe in pain.

That’s one thing. But really, the volume of our voice doesn’t matter. You don’t want that to be the thing that is offensive. By no means. The truth is offensive enough. People don’t always need a harsh word; the crushed need comfort. But the comforted need to be crushed. Boy, are we a comforted people. Whether we are in reality remains to be seen. But we love being comforted, or at least the search for it, which usually ends in us being crushed. Straight up truth will do that do a person. We try to ignore the truth, but then it peaks out. When reality is allowed to shine, it’s a jab to the jaw. Keep everything behind the curtain, sooth, medicate, ignore pain, sin, dirt, grime, dark thoughts and feelings, guilt, remorse, resentment, anger.
We never fully get crushed. Maybe a pinky or toenail here or there, but we escape.

Truth and reality and consequences are not fun to dwell on, not happy times, so comfort never comes, just more patchwork medicating. The truth crushes. The damning truth of our inadequacy, but The Truth comforts. We are inadequate, but there in One who is Adequate. One who Is. One who is Comfort, who is the Beginning and End. He became pain for us. This One lifted all our trash, our garbage, all about us that we loathe, that we ignore, that we hide, that we despise, that we try to forget — took that and applied it to himself. The Pure became the Impure. Think of the worst thing that you ever did. That’s what Jesus became. He became our sin.

The thing is though that Jesus was not just man, but God. and God is not sin.
He’s not dead or condemned. He is alive right now.
That’s Easter.

It matters even we when we think it doesn’t. When we think the things of God are of no effect, well, it doesn’t matter because they are anyway in spite of what we think, or how we feel.

That is where quite a bit of comfort comes in. God is unchanging. Truth is not captive to me, my, life, my circumstances, or my emotions. It just is. God just is. He is God and I am not. When you feel small and insignificant, good. Because you are. You are special only because God said you are. That is better than your mommy or your daddy, or your spouse or yourself telling you that. Because He is God.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

There are two kinds of fear in relation to God.
There is the fear that God is coming to get you.
And there is the fear that God is going to leave.
One causes you to run away and one causes you to run toward Him.
At the resurrection we can rest, but in this life we’re never going to stop running. The question simply is, “In what direction are you running?”