Easter Changed the World

Easter is packed with essentials:

1.  Physical life is valuable.  Life is not just waiting for heaven.

2.  There is a resurrecting presence and power around us.

3.  Dying for us is the model of ultimate love and possibly the key to resurrection.  A model for all.

4.  Every human being, in giving, caring, helping, reaching out to others, showing loving kindness is a practitioner of "dying" for others.  New Life follows that kind of dying too.  (think of the Easter model).

5.  He lives!  In us, as well as in the great beyond.  The love within us is Jesus' love.  It is giving Jesus when we love someone.

The Good Lord Heals, Repairs and Restores

We have blamed God too much!  The problems in this world are the result of human breakdown, damaged genetics, individual decision-making.  The negative happenings in life should not be referred to using the words "the Lord's will"  or "God's will".

God shows up to heal, repair, renew us after the breakdowns of life.  Here is an example expressed by a famous TV personality Robin Roberts after an excruciating challenge with cancer:  "I have learned more about myself  through sorrow than through joy.  I am a better, stronger, more complete person because of these trials and tribulations."----Yes that is where our loving Lord Jesus really shows up.  It is after we are hit by the freight train.:
 

Love One Another

We were speeding along in the car pool lane when I noticed a motorcycle coming up behind us.  I moved a little over to the left to allow him to pass more comfortably.  As he passed he raised the three fingers on his left hand, as he held on to the handle bars.  It was a signal of appreciation.  It was love!  That small gesture lifted my spirits for the next half hour or more. He might have been an ex-convict, or a bum of some kind.  He might have been a godless atheist.  Nevertheless he has the love of God inside him and he sprinkled a little of that love on us as he passed.

That is how easy it is to be an instrument of the Lord Jesus,  And one can be that even if he doesn't know it.  We want him to know.  But he may not be open to that truth for a while.  But he is far more than he thinks he is.

Bad and Good

Nothing bad should be blamed on God.  It all comes from our human brokenness or our failure to plan, build, prepare for storms, disaster and breakdowns.  They happen in our world.  And they are not sent by God.

Recovery, healing, creativity, beauty, efficiency, comes from God.    God is there picking us up, re-newing our broken spirits, stimulating ideas and solutions, holding the shattered together.

Disability Builds Faith

Popular opinion holds that a disabling life event is likely to destroy a person's faith.  A research project studying 26 men and women who had acquired permanent disabilities relegating them to wheelchair living revealed the opposite:
     53%  found their faith was increased by their disability.
     31%  "kept their faith" despite the challenges of disability.
     8%    found faith through their disability.
     8%  described their faith as "uncertain".
     0%   lost their faith.

Reactions of the individuals:

1.  God-believers experienced God as a "presence"-someone to talk to, to question, someone who listens.

2.  God's help was described as --providing, protecting, giving strength, endurance and patience, and understanding their struggles and caring about them.

3.  Several believe that God someohow gave them their disability but they did not feel bitter or betrayed.

4.  All indicated that "talking to people gives meaning to their lives."  They agreed that feeling lonely and different is common.

The Wheelchair:

46% (12) hate the wheelchair and want to get out of it.

31%  (8) said they accepted wheelchair living.

23% (6) were ambivalent.  They both hate it and accept it.

100%  agreed that "to walk again" is a dream that never leaves.

69%  (18) express a hopeful attitude.

8% held hopeless feelings

23% were mixed with both hopeful and helpless feelings

"Hope" means not giving up.  Hope is fueled by a faith in God.  Hope blossoms when friends and family are close, supportive and encouraging.

Merry Xmas

When I was a child I was told in was inappropriate and irreverent to write X-mas. The teachers said using the X instead of writing Christ was a way of leaving Christ out of Christmas.

Years later I learned the truth.  For one thing the letter X is not the third to the last letter of  the English alphabet, like in XYZ.  It is a Greek letter, and pronounced chi (ki).  And that letter is the first letter of the word Christ in its original Greek language.  It legitimately represented the word Kristos or Christ.

So Xmas is in fact Christmas.

The Connecticut Slaughter

Twenty-eight children and adults have been murdered.    The first priority for all of us in the U.S. is to feel that pain, actualize the sorrow, weep and be in anguish.  Jesus said "weep with those who weep".

The media is preoccupied with obviously relevant issues like gun control and mental illness.  Those must be considered, but for right now they distract us and pull us away from the heart-brokenness we must share.  The causes of this incredible massacre must be faced but for the time being this is a time of weeping and mourning.  

Getting at causes eases our pain.  Such concerns move us out of our hearts and bowels into our heads, into thinking instead of feeling.  That process should wait. It is a process of too quickly moving on and too inapprpriately cogitating instead of a letting the pain be.

The only comfort is Jesus' love for every child.  They are safe in the arms of Jesus--every one of them.  The parents would have them back in their own arms, and so would we,  but Christmas reminds us of the powerful, beautiful love of Jesus for every child.