Yesterday concluded Easter weekend... to my everlasting shame I must confess I have never given this holiday weekend the reverence it deserves. Last night I believe I finally began to taste how I should have been viewing it all along.
Good Friday service was good, it always manages to touch me. Yet somehow in the crevices of my heart I know some of it is tied into the fact that I am melancholy thus can rely on the sorrow and depth of emotion associated with the cross to reach me because of my tendency to lean towards the somber. Then Easter Sunday came! And I felt pretty much the same as ever. People greeted me with large smiles, "Happy Easter!". All I could do was manage a smile. If I felt gutsy, I'd chance a "hi". I knew something was amiss.
I enjoyed being spoiled with my church's special holiday treats of our talented brass glorifying God with their talent and our youth and children's choirs performing. Their innocent voices filling our sanctuary, I must be honest, pulled a chord among my heart strings that my pride doesn't enjoy being tugged on. But it was worth it.
My surrounding social circle continued in their joy and festivities that seemed so illusive to me. My parents treated my bosom friend, their prodigal, and I to a lovely lunch. Then the two of us were going to indulge in some nowadays rare face time. As we did our usual indecisive routine, "What do you wanna do? I dunno. Where should we go? I dunno...", we saw two friends waltz up. For two dancers of too many years, we very "ungracefully" stumbled up to them and from there a wonderful afternoon commenced.
We talked and talked and talked about too many things to list but they all revolved around life, emotions, being female, our futures and our faith. It was a most precious afternoon. Finally it was evening and time for our church's tradition of having a handful of people from our congregation share what the resurrection means to them. I've been with this church for nearly 6 years thus attended about 5 of these. So it was nothing new however some of what was said that night brought a perfect revelatory conclusion to my Easter weekend.
It began with one of my "babies" sharing. Again that chord I don't like to be touched was being yanked and the world looked a little liquid for a minute as I listen to a young woman, who was once one of my little girls in jr. high, share from such a beautiful and pure heart all that God meant to her and had shown this past year.
Then one of the men of our church shared the stages of life God has brought him through and now how he is in a pruning stage. I don't know anything about that... heh. He paraphrased the beloved C.S. Lewis (where would we be if that man never came to know Jesus? let's now think about it) as he talked about this place God has brought him to: "You asked for a loving God: you have one... Welcome to the Consuming Fire." Can I just saw WOW! His fire we must walk through is His love. Heb. 12:29 Our God IS a CONSUMING fire! To be loved by my God means who I am will be destroyed, eaten up, absorbed and cease to exist. This may not seem like love but here's another C.S. Lewis quote: God gives "what he has, not what he has not; the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows - the only food that any possible universe ever can grow - then we must starve eternally." Mmm mmm good. And this is so much more than Campbell's Soup. It is love to be stripped of the nasty, perverted parts of us and to be made to look more like a perfect being.
Lastly one of the friends I spent all afternoon with got up and shared. Her simple honesty words spoke to my rhetoric riddled heart and brought what I needed to change in myself home last night. She told a story of herself that sounded a lot like me. She describe herself as "a white-washed casket" pretty on the outside but dead on the inside. Then she told of her realization that what the resurrection meant to her was the fact that she has life NOW and a risen Savior who could be with her in that very moment. A few others shared the same thoughts. We are alive now! We have hope now! We have a living Lord now! We have life! The joy we feel when a flower blooms or that bean plant that your 2nd grader brings home finally sprouts a stalk above that dirt in that plastic water cup and especially the elation we feel when new life enters the world. All that is just a taste of what Easter is all about, what the resurrections is all about. It's about the ability to enjoy life. I did all yesterday: I was touched by beautiful voices from young lives, I enjoyed fellowship with lives, beings like me talking about none other than life. Then God brought it home when people shared the truth I needed to understand: the resurrection is about life itself.
After our Good Friday service I said hi to my pastor as many do at my church. His parting words to me at that time seems confusing for their obviousness (i mistakenly thought at the time): "Remember, He's alive." If I had only known how profound that statement would be.
ng people in search of love, it is so incredibly possible to have a fairytale. You only need look to your heavenly Prince Charming first. 1 John 4:19 We love, because He first loved us. But to my chagrin how I found out this truth was through the love of the man I will soon call husband. And thank God I will! I see what an example of Christ and His love he is to me and it makes me fall even more in love with him. I feel like I am living a fairytale. But I'm not because those aren't real. What I have is real. It's not a fairytale, it's a Godtale.