the call

i missed our good friday service last night. i had too much grading to do... still do. but i hate missing good friday. i feel like easter is cheapened without comemorating Jesus' death first. it's as if you went to a carnival and were handed a huge teddy bear without knocking down the milk jugs first. i mean sure, it's a nice teddy bear and all, but still, it will probably just sit on my shelf with the rest of the teddy bears (that is if i collected teddy bears... which i don't, really!). i remember when i registered to run a half marathon. they gave me my packet of info, which included a shirt, the week before the race. it was a cool shirt, but it was just that.... a shirt. after i ran the race, however, it took on special meaning, and i wore it with pride, with dignity (and i wore it often; too often... in fact, i think my wife threw it out due the wear i put on it).

so goes the life of christians, i think. we lose our sense of awe for the granduer of the easter message if we don't daily carry the cross of good friday. what does that mean? i think it means choosing god's way instead of ours even when it's hard, even when it's burdensome. resurrection and restoration entered our world 2000 years ago, and the baton has been passed on to his Church. a new age has begun, and new age still awaits. but the Church like Jesus, will only usher in this newness through obedience and suffering. it's the call of the christian.

The Empty Grave (birds and bandwagons part 2)

We're coming up quickly on Holy Week...Easter is a little more than a week away. In light of this fact, I'd like to share a continuation of my previous post (birds and bandwagons). As I mentioned below, I came upon a little injured bird that we took care of until it died the other day. It's body was stiff, and the little tuff on it's head was all fluffed out. I buried it in our backyard. I made quite a to do about it so that my daughter and her cousin could find a little closure in the event. After digging a hole and burying the bird, I constructed a tiny cross out of bamboo and vine that I stuck in the ground just behind the grave. Then I piled rocks on the spot where I buried it. The kids handled it well, especially after seeing the little grave and saying a prayer by it. The next morning before school, they wanted to see the grave again, so I agreed to take them out right before it was time to leave. As I approached I observed the site and cringed. There was a hole where the rocks had been, and the bird was gone. My daughter immediately pinned it on a racoon, and her cousin simply resigned to the fact that "it was his time to go." My mind was moving more in the direction of my daughter's suggestion, but I figured it was more than likely one of the cats.

I must admit that the sight disturbed me. I mean graves are somewhat sacred, or at least taboo.. even the grave of a bird. All I wanted to know was who or what desecrated this site. Kind of silly, I know, but it got me thinking about the following portion of scripture:

"Early on the first day of the week while it was still dark, Mary Magdelene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running...and said 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him'
... but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look in the tomb and saw two angels in white, seatedwhere Jesus' body had been
... They asked her, 'Woman why are you crying?' 'They have taken my Lord away,' she said, 'and I don't know where they have put him.' At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize it was Jesus
...'Woman', he said, 'why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?' Thinking he was the gardener, she said, 'Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.' Jesus said to her, 'Mary.'

I've always wondered what took Mary so long to get it. I mean angels are there, Jesus himself even shows up, and she's still asking about the body! What's up with that? I've often wondered. Don't you understand? He's alive. But this experience with the bird has given me new sympathy for the poor lady. I mean once you see something or someone dead, the finality of it sticks to your brain. She saw him dead, and so to her, an empty grave had to mean robbers, theives, or gardeners.

To me it meant racoons, cats, or some other critter. And doubtless, if birds return to their maker, resurrection has been delayed for our little friend, and his body was consumed much quicker than I had intended. But hope springs from empty bird graves marked by crosses and invaded by critters nonetheless. Because though consumption comes to all, the cross and the empty grave give evidence that there was one who couldn't be consumed, even by death and decay. A missing dead bird, a small empty hole and two sticks tied together were reminders to me that death has been defeated, and restoration awaits this earth and resurrection God's people

Curly no more

My daughter’s fish died about a month ago (thus prompting eventually the need for another pet, about which you can read in “Bad Rat or Bad Rap”). It jumped out of the fish bowl. My wife found it still alive and placed it back in the water, but it was too late. Hours later it hovered motionless at the bottom of the aquarium, and then eventually became a belly up beta. We did a brief service by the toilet side at which my 4 year old daughter sang then cried. It was a solemn yet beautiful ceremony. Poor Curly (my daughter named it) decided she would push the envelope of her existence. Apparently the proverbial grass looked greener on the other side of her fish bowl. Obviously it was not – it was the wrong environment for a fish. But our funeral rectified that as we placed Curly’s corpse back in the place of its origin –water. And so, I’ve come to the conclusion that toilet bowl funerals are quite suitable for fish, in the same way that dirt funerals are appropriate for humans and other ground dwelling beasts. It makes sense in the circle of life as we know it, I guess. And while death may mark the doorway to dirt for human bodies and a segue to the sewer for pet fishes named Curly, I’m convinced that restoration and resurrection have entered the world. Their presence incrementally and mysteriously rewinds and reverses the known order of nature. Now, in large part hidden, a quantum explosion of revelation will one day disclose the ways in which these forces have been at work in and through God and his people. Don’t worry, fish will still be in the sea (or fish bowls) and man will still walk the earth, but the circle of life will no longer entail death. We'll finally be in the right environment to sustain life.