Could you say the darkest day?

His body lies dead in a tomb. Nothing stirs there. They set a guard to guarantee it, but no one else goes near. It is Shabbat. Time of enforced rest.

How did they feel? Did despair weight every muscle, every bone? Did their souls feel dead, stone dead, yet required to go on somehow? Where some gathered, did they talk much? Even at all? This was grief extreme.

Or did restlessness resist restraint? Next morning, when free to go, those women “hurried to the tomb.” Why? Mere dread angst? The agitation of flailing depression? Or something else?

They had grieved near another tomb, not many days past. And He had come then and offered hope their bitter hearts could not embrace — until He said, until He shouted,

“Come forth!”

And the brother they had known was dead stumbled out from yawning darkness, dripping grave clothes…

What are we to make of darkest hours? Was it this very day that gave us the saying “…just before dawn”?

Here, now, this day-night, right  at dawning, moon shines such brightness through kitchen windows it stabs the eye with glare. But their darkness must have sunk and smothered far more real with great heavy cloud shroud blanketing both sky and soul. Truly the darkest hour ever…

Yet even in that there must have been sparks…

Of fantastic rumors: “… tombs opened and many came forth…,” “…and they appeared to many…,” And verifiable facts: “…and the temple veil was rent from top to bottom….”

In our darkest hours, let us remember Earth’s darkest hour, grasp any midnight glimmer… The God-man never sleeps anymore. “Always interceding…” And “joy comes in the morning.”

“The Lion lies down with the Lamb.”

The Lamb is awake, and with Him the Lion.

*****

Linked to

It hit like a blow. Sudden, unexpected. Punch-to-face?… no, punch-to-the-soul betrayal, treachery. Subtle subterfuge, secret sabotage. Again! When I thought (foolishly) it was over, for good and all. Selling out for… for what? It’s mad!

Does repeated treachery lashing our own lives deepen our bonds with His wounding? Even with strokes up to thirty-nine? Does our own renewed betrayal and abandonment by those so close — seemingly close — jolt our hearts awake to His?

If so, there’s reason to rejoice in this unreasonable, there’s cause to call out praises for our causeless soul slights and those shaming slaps to our psyches.

“I want to know Christ

and the power of His resurrection,

and the fellowship of His suffering…”

said Paul.

Is it possible to know the first fully,

and the second more than symbolically,

if we do not experience the third?

If need for such pain be the case, good reason arises to rejoice in unjust anguish — good cause for accounting such trials… for joy. As He Who “for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame…”

New meaning emerges for “let patience have its perfect work…”

Reflecting deeply this morning on His betrayal, dishonor, pain, grief, and shame…

and thanking God for life slights and soul blows.

As for those who betray bound words and scourge the spirit, who prove to be “those by whom offense comes” …

For such we pray.

As He prayed.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they’re doing”

Father, forgive them even if they do know what they’re doing.

Two posts back (in a repost), I asked, “What if you knew you only had one week left to live on earth?”

Lisa from Lisa Notes commented,

“I was asked… a week or so ago: If I were told I had 24 hours to live, what would I do? I responded that I’d want to be with loved ones. But my friend said she’d be calling everyone she knew that didn’t know Jesus, and telling them to find Him. I thought that was a very good answer.” (emphasis mine)

That comment went stirring in my head, prodding repeatedly for my own (honest) answer — but then my thoughts ran on further, to exactly what Jesus did His last 24 hours before He was taken prisoner by man.

First, my self thoughts: “Hm. To be honest, I think I’d want to be with loved ones, too.”

But what about all those lost and needy people? What about all the good that I would have liked to have done that would remain unaccomplished? Would I run around trying to do it all in 24 hours — maybe with my loved ones trailing along?

My guess is I’d be lying weak on a deathbed, incapable of any action and little speech. So my hope is that I would have introduced people around my life to Jesus, would have encouraged them in Him and helped them see in His light, would have done whatever part God had told me to do — before my death day.

But considering further, I thought: If any “unfinished business” really mattered to me, wouldn’t I try to pass on the baton to my loved ones gathered around?

Another “Aha!” moment! Isn’t that exactly what He did?

Tuesday’s post said what He did in His final week was telling. What he did in His last free day is even more so. What strikes me now is how much it jibes with what I think most of us would really do, if we knew we would die within that time.

Guess what Jesus did in His last 24 hours? Although there are several chapters of scripture giving a lot more detail, in summary…

1) He gathered His loved ones around Him. Just a little group, in an upper room.

2) He let them know His heart, how He loved them, and what He most desired for them.

3) He gave them instructions for after He was no longer with them. And…

4) He passed on the baton for them (and those to come after them) to continue His unfinished business!

His main passionate desire and instruction: For them to abide in Him, to bear the spiritual fruit of that abiding, and to love one another with the humility of the foot-washing servant.

His last day: His last will and testament.

To read more: The Gospel of John, chapters 13-17 (John 13, John 14, John 15, John 16, John 17). A good read for this day/week.

(Or, go here  and read all the references under Maundy Thursday.)

*****

Listing More Reasons to Worship and Praise Him — Counting to 10,000

(In my personal journal, I have already passed 400, but am picking up my numbering here from the last post containing listed Reasons)

94 – He has qualified us (who believe in Him) to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light (Col 1:12)

95 – He has delivered us from the power of darkness (Col 1:13)

96 – He has transferred us into His kingdom (Col 1:13)

97 – In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:14)

98 – By Him all powers were created (Col 1:16).

99 – By Him all thrones were created (Col 1:16).

100 – By Him all dominions were created (Col 1:16).

101 – By Him all principalities were created (Col 1:16).

102 – By Him all things consist/hold together (Col 1:17).

103 – He is before all things (Col 1:17)

104 – He is the head of the body, the Church (Col 1:18)

105 – He is the firstborn from the dead (Col 1:18)

106 – In all things He will have pre-eminence (Col 1:18)

*****

Linked to

Word-Filled Wednesday at the Internet Cafe

It’s my evening alone. The house is quiet. I move through the darkened hall, pass the window. A sparkle, a beam of light catches my eye, and I stoop to peer out this rear view-frame.  A bright star burning? Or Jupiter reflecting? No… Venus? Strong little light in the darkening night. But the moon… there is moon, somewhere… for I see its dim glow spread around, its cast shadows.

I stand a while and just soak it in. Beauty in darkness.

It’s later. I leave the upstairs room adopted for my solitude of late, a “guest room” seldom used. And I enter that same darkened hall, part-lightened from behind me, but still dim enough for outdoor night lights to show up. So I shuffle over to that window before going down the stairs. To see again the stars, moon shadows…

But oh! Now there’s this.

He must have set a spotlight and a timer. And there it is, predominating countryside and road, for those few souls who pass this way by night to see.

And in the morning I ask its purpose, although I’m sure I know it.

And yes, I do.

That folk might know, or be reminded, what this week is all about. Not eggs and bunnies. Not beans in baskets. But a man who walked the earth awhile, a perfect man, the only one, embodying God Himself: walking, working, healing, teaching, agonizing through the week of will and testament, of death and darkness — and then, of incomprehensible sudden burst of life and hope anew! The unbelievable that happened.

A weathered cross on a weathered barn, barely visible, yet spot-lit. Reminder of the barely visible, humanly incredible Truth that still, even in this present darkness, shines through at times. A death on a cross, one of many, yet none like it. And a Life resurrected, like none other, for us to share and live ourselves.

May we see it in the shadowed hollows of our lives. May its light shine in and keep us in hope.

*****

Linked to

‘Zeal for Your house has eaten me up.” –Psalm 69:9: John 2:17

If you knew you had only one week to live, how would you spend it? Jesus knew, and how He spent it is telling.

I must not have been paying attention, for so many years of gospel reading. I didn’t really notice how much, and what kind of activity, He crammed into that week. My mind must have jumped from Triumphal Entry to Last Supper and Crucifixion, and lumped all the text in between with His earlier times of ministry, the three-plus years before.

But what a loaded week!

[If you’d like to follow His days from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Day, Blue Letter Bible has this guide. To choose different translations, scroll to the top of text.]

First, He came in lamblike: Riding on that donkey, fulfilling ancient prophecy.

Came in, evidently saying little, except that the stones would cry out if the crowd didn’t.

But next morning, what a lion!

Starting with a bang or two or three—shocking, provocative, and highly demonstrative: killing a fruitless fig tree with a curse on the way into town, overturning  temple tables, confronting money-grabbers head-on. Coins flying everywhere. Money-changers  scrambling to retrieve “their” scattered cash. Him with a whip of cords, driving them out. Tumult!

(Was this not a foreshadowing of the kind of return He’s going to make someday — riding not a donkey but the figurative war horse of conquering Hero and King?)

Then he went to healing (another foreshadowing?) and teaching a more traditional way. But not wimpy. Incisive. Confrontational. Full of warning. Dangerous. Its aim: Truth! Which is not always usually welcome. So, like true prophets before Him, He put His life in jeopardy.

As masses gathered to hear him—and also scribes and Pharisees—he minced no words, avoided no truths needing utterance. Addressing hypocrisy with thinly veiled parables, He told of wicked and unfaithful vineyard keepers, of a son who says he’ll serve his father but doesn’t, of a wedding guest thrown out because he lacks the acceptable garment…

After this He did a lot of verbal jousting with those scribes and Pharisees and the spies they sent into the crowds to try to trip Him up, confound His teaching, make Him look bad before the people.

Were His answers quiet and even-toned — or like Ravi Zacharias’s machine-gun-rapid shooting forth of demolish-the-opposition answers? Whichever the case, this was verbal war, and the stakes were high: the honor of God and the souls of men. In the process, even many of the Pharisees and scribes came to true faith. But those who didn’t were now stirred to murderous anger.

That didn’t stop Him. He went on. And He told them what they most needed to hear, whether they would receive it or not. He knew He was “asking for it.” But then, as He also pointed out to the disciples, it was for His execution that He had come in to Jerusalem.

So, how would you spend your last week? That’s how He spent His. He came into Jerusalem to lay down His life as a ransom for many. But before He did, He poured Himself out in zeal and love for God’s house, God’s truth, and God’s people.

Truly He came in not only as the Lamb of God, but also as the Lion. 

[Edited post from archives]

*****

Linked to