Entering

Easter week is here again, and last year I promised God and myself that it would be different this time. I was going to do this right with Him, with my family. 

For the first 10 years that I've been aware of my Salvation in Jesus, I've struggled with a lack of focus on Him during Christmas and Easter holidays.

I've always pushed the blame for this on the etched habits of my secular upbringing, our obligations to family and cultural traditions... but this year I'm learning a hard humbling lesson:
I have been dead wrong.

Because nothing can stand in the way of me celebrating Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).

God doesn't require me to lock myself or my family away for days on end to be with Him. He doesn't need me to partake in a ceremonial cleansing to make myself fit for his presence. I don't have to travel to a temple, or even light a candle.

The facts are all here in my head. I just have to click on "transfer" and impart them onto my heart. I just have to pray that He will continue to make newness of this Life in Him, and then watch the New Life begin to grow.  (2 Corinthians 5:17) 

These Christ centered holidays should be the easiest times to be in the presence of God. They set the perimeters around a specific Sacred event for which we can focus on, together... and all we have to do is enter.  

And when I do, my own walk becomes enriched as I meditate on the life of Jesus and His journey to the cross, for me.

The Truth:

I've fallen short. (Romans 3:23) 

The Father knows it. (Ezekiel 11:5) 

Sin has it's consequences. (Romans 6:23) 

God sends His only Son, my friend, Jesus. (John 15:13-14) 

And what's worse than giving your own self to die but to ask your only son to die right before your eyes?

And Jesus showed, and stopped the trial right from under me. (John 18:28-40) 

He stuck out His Hand to take on the mess that kept me from Our Father...
He asked to wear my sins and stand trial in my place. 

And what would be worse than to hear your own son plead for you to let the cup pass, knowing full well your very will for him to drink of it?

(Matthew 26:42) 

But Jesus traded with me...
the cost of my flesh for the chance that I'd leave it behind to follow Him. 

(1 Peter 2:24) 

And He fully paid my penalty, The Lamb of complete atonement,
that I could stand before Him, spotless. 

(John 1:29) 

It was a brutal trial.

There was spitting for my calloused heart.
But the spit ran down His face. 

(Matthew 26:67) 

There was beating for my stubborn refusal.
But the blows pummeled my Redeemer.

(Luke 22:63)

There was mockery and humiliation for my pride.
But they stripped, jeered at, and taunted my own Brother in my place. 

(Matthew 27:29) 

There was an abandoning from The Father.

And what would be worse than asking your son to wear the ugly, suffer the brutality, die young, and to have you turn your back on Him in his final moment of earth life?
But it was done, and it was His Son who He turned His Face from. (Matthew 27:46)

There was spearing for my impurity.
But it was He who took the blade.(John 19:34)

There is the gift of freedom for me, at 33 years old,
but He was dead for 3 days, at 33 years, to make that way for me. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

And I don't need to wear a fancy dress, or wash behind my kid's ears. I don't have to find a rock and throw myself across it for the night. I don't have to steal away to count, recite, or stand-sit-kneel. I don't have to moo, or hop on one foot, or offer a ram for slaughter.

The Truth is, I can look for Him right here in the kitchen, in my pajamas, with my bed-head and my broken Nikon. I can trace the nails with my trembling gratitude wrapped in shame for my partaking. I can receive the forgiveness and lose myself in His Mercy, nose down in my own stinky living room carpeting. 

I can return to my feet, grab this camera, and ask that He will bless me to find Him in this very place. (Matthew 7:7-8) 

The veil is torn. (Matthew 27:51)

The simple Truth:
No matter the eggs, or bunnies... the holy oils or monasteries,
Our God is right here. Always.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your presence? 

If I ascend to heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn,

If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 

Even there Your hand will lead me,

And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

~Psalm 139:7-10

Mary

I imagine her full with Jesus. Step after step making her way to the census. Joseph by her side.

Did she follow the prophesy of her own Child's coming? 

Did she wonder how he would ever be born in Bethlehem? And did she fill with anticipation learning that caesar's order would take them to the very place...   

I wonder if she truly understood who she was bringing forth, or if the Mother of the Messiah was blessed with a vague understanding of the sacrifice during the swaddling of her first born.

Could she have even held herself up at first sight of her infant, her Savior, if she truly understood that very night? 

When Jesus later asked her, "did you not know I would be in my Father's house?" Did she?

I think about her with no straight iron or washing machine. Traveling with no laptop or cell phone with preferred obstetrician on speed dial. 

No car. 

Not even cart.

God inside of her.

And I want to put everything down and walk away. The blogs and technology, make-up and media, even camera and lights. I want to set out a candle so that all I can see is flame. So that all I can remember is His fire inside me until it is etched habit, like breathing.

But if it weren't for this ".com", would I be here praying for alignment with the Spirit as I write? Would I have found such a path that even my skin can submit to, with my cheeks soaked loving Mary, a woman I've never before considered? 

Without the spurring on of His love for you and my desire to attend the feeding and fanning of flames, wouldn't I still just be writing me on my own pages?

A lot of questions I don't have sure answers for this morning. 

But in my anticipation, in my own waiting on this eve for the coming Christ child, there is one thing I am sure of... I am waiting for what He already knows will be. And in that there is great peace.  

Spirit to spirit to spirit

Knocking, I hear the barking of his dogs inside. Through the pain of glass in the door I see his familiar shape standing in the kitchen. Face down the hallway in my direction he smiles, permitting me to open and enter at my own risk. 

I wait in the entrance for him to quiet and corral the Pulis like I know only he can. 

I look him over... inside-out striped thermal top over t-shirt, sweat pants, socks and rubber shoes.

This is the first time I've seen him without a skull cap since his accident. 

I scan for scars of a head trauma that took his life last year, twice.  

But the only visible marks left are on the inside shining out. The kind of mark only our Creator and Healer can make. 

I remember being in his home for the first time. Taking care of the dogs while he was away, running. I remember God telling me to lay and pray. I cried joy as His love for this friend of mine washed over me... and the layers of intercession filled with whispers of a coming change through healing and refinement.

He turns to the table and returns with a gift in hand. A necklace he bought me from the top of a mountain someplace in Arizona. 

Not safe in a box. We are not either one of us tucked safely in boxes. 

Just fingers holding delicate strands of love and offerings from spirit to spirit to Spirit. 

Father God shines, lighting up the room.

And I look him over again... a man refining, healing. Changed.

My path has not been crossed so many times in so many ways by another. Not any ordinary coincidental happening. This is most definitely an ordained divinely sewn tapestry. 

We talk. Stirring the waters of God within, wading in the mainstream of His will for His children.

And I pray that his real scar, like mine -a religion that tells us we cannot come- will draw him to the scar of the One; a nail shaped covenant that bids us all, come.

We stand together in his living room. 
On the outside we are surrounded by gift boxes. On the inside there lay boxes we've crawled out of, wounded, to face the Maker - and we wait for the celebration of a God who cradled Himself a Son in flesh and manger - A God Who promises to cradle us and clear our path to wholeness and forever. 

The Christmas Gift in Christ is again extended, and I savor deep the Truth that God holds us in his fingers right now. 
Right where we are. 
Just as we are. 
Broken and healed, fallen and rising, hated and still finding love in what's left.

And to Him, through Him, because of Him we are... just right.