Come Out Dancing

LINES WRITTEN A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY
by William Wordsworth

...I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world...

It is past Easter but can such a thing as Resurrection pass? I think it can not. It must hold us in its solitary wonder, amazed. Not as those who merely look into the empty tomb but as followers who have entered on soft feet, breath held, to come out again with dancing and a congratulatory shout.

This is a moment when the Earth yielded, Death tapped out and the One in whom all things have their being came back to us with new life brimming over into all the mighty world.

How is such a One, such and event, confined to any one day or season? The Easter blessing has broken free of our liturgical calender. Bright Easter's life has reclaimed our dead-land and planted in vast wastelands, hope. Has given us eyes to see the Spirit whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air...and us!

Christ occupies the minutes of our lives and infuses them with His own life and goodness. His own obedience and glory. His purpose. His ways. His Spring. If Resurrection is holding us then let us hold fast to it as well through all the death producing, downcast, troubling moments and seasons. Let the promise of a second Spring disturb our hopeless thoughts and incite them to riotous joy! He lives! He lives!

Resurrection is not a day. Resurrection is a person. Resurrection is Jesus and Jesus is ours. The living, breathing, intercessing Son of God is ours. In the piercing light of His love and grace there are no unyielding stones and every moment is that unparalleled Third Day.


The sun will not set on such a day.
Its power-ability to transform our lives will not abate.
His mighty heart is in all things.
It is time to come out dancing!

I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. John 16:22

Picture link:
http://sierramoon21.deviantart.com/art/Heart-Shaped-Petal-165600610

A Willingness To Hope

Today’s Reflection

JOHN THE BAPTIST is (an) adventurer, stalking through the wilderness of his time on the trail of the Messiah. He’s the original hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, but he also offers hope to the community he rakes over the coals.

A willingness to hope is a willingness to enter the wilderness. Hope is not a domesticated state of mind. It seems to camp out in odd places, crops up at the worst possible times.

Just as we resign ourselves to the minimum wages of life with no benefits, hope whispers that we shouldn't settle for despair’s bottom line. Hope thrives in the barren places of our lives.

- Heather Murray Elkins
From page 360 of The Upper Room Disciplines 2006: A Book of Daily Devotions.


I am enraptured by hope. Hope's got me at "Hello." It is like Type O blood. The universal donor type. It is what everyone can use any time and I can use all the time. Hope is stuffed with what Kim at Ambushed by God calls "wonderfullness."

Anything you have plus hope is a game changer. A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G!

I have a few friends who are about to see hope roll up its sleeves. I am already getting the banners and balloons ready for the finish line and juice in little cups as they run through the wilderness toward it. Hope is calling to the resources God prepared in advance to snap to attention. Water producing rocks, angel food, angels-big ones!

Hope draws our faint hearts like a magnet. It is a miracle producing alliance that hooks up with faith and boasts facts not in evidence. What a thing! Who but God could come up with such a wonder? Just when you think you only have a mite-size version, faith and hope come along and super-size it. What an economy!

Hope understands Hard. It just refuses to be bullied by it.

To my family, friends and readers who need it, hope is calling you by name. Hope has packed your suitcase for the journey and paid for your ticket. When you think you cannot go another step, hope will see that you get there. Hope has filled the bleachers with a cheering section just for you. I will be happily among them. You will do the same for me.

How can we fail?
Look who loves us!
We worship the God who is Hope!

-Kat

That Glory May Rise

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down." Matthew 4:5-6

The highest point of the temple overlooked the Kidron Valley with a dizzying drop that had once caused the Jebusites to feel completely secure from their enemies. It was also known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:2) where God would judge the nations of this world. Atop its pinnacle now stands a young carpenter in the middle of a test. "Throw yourself down." We know He does not. Not yet.

Fast forward three miracle filled years and that same carpenter is in the same valley in a dark night of the soul, faced with the terrifying will of the Father to throw Himself down for real where no angels would be summoned to His rescue. We know He does.

With out raising a hand or a word in His own defense, the One who made murderous waves smooth sailing, skin eaten to the bone new and supple and who turned four days dead in the Bethany heat back into Lazarus; that Blessed One laid down on the ground of Calvary and was crucified for us, died and was buried. We also know that 'He rose again on the third day according to the scriptures.'

We know that after His Resurrection He meets several of His close friends who do not recognize Him. There are many reasons why that could occur but the one that keeps coming to me is that obedience is transforming. Jesus was obedient as no one has ever been. 'Obedient to the death of the cross.' He threw it all down. Absolutely every shred, every vestige of His own life and will, Christ threw down and down and down. There was nothing left to surrender. He was absolutely empty with not one self willed thought left to speak up. No wonder He was unrecognizable.

Obedience transforms us. It releases us from the clutches of other influential forces that age us and make us unloving and petty, self protective, ineffective and unchristlike.


Obedience transforms us so that we can transform the world around us. Obedience makes room for the unrestricted, unhindered plan of God. Obedience stands on the shoulders of faith and calls to grace. Obedience makes everything different in ways that need to be different. It doesn't always make everything easy.

It is Easter Sunday and the day is a celebration of the power of God to transform death into life, to change obedience into the miraculous. The One who was thrown down has risen up!

The power to transform us is here every day not just this day but because of this day. Obedience transforms. It makes the old- new, the useless- productive, the bitter- sweet and out of death it makes life, all for the sake of love.

Christ loved us and He loved the Father. Obedience without love is tyranny. Obedience with love will not leave a vain thing standing.

As we move into a new week let's consider Paul's encouragement to grow up in obedience. To throw down what wants its own way in opposition to Christ.

The world is unprincipled. It's dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn't fight fair. But we don't live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity. 2 Cor 10:3-6

If you ever wanted to change your appearance now is the time.

Obedient love transforms and beautifies the transformed.

What do you need to throw down so glory can rise?

I answer for myself:

Everything.

-Kat


Picture from a card Jan Collins gave me of Deborah Gone To War

You might also enjoy this:
http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2011/11/tendrils-faith.html

Peter's Tomb

SPEAK TO ME OF BURIED SORROW
You crossed the brook Kidron

running with the blood
of Passover lambs
dark waters whispering
of greater darkness to come
and it had come, Jesus,
the cup full of storm
all bitter water
uncommanded to be still
It is still now
A different darkness holds you
in silent stone
unspiced air dry and soft
the last of life
like frozen rivers in the cloth
Other rivers live tonight
Grief like winter melting
overflowing riverbank
Can you hear him?
Heart heavier than
your burial stone
Cephas is interred
here with you
refusing comfort
Curses, self-loathing,
cut like knives
His sorry soul
bleeds repentance
You will lay
a tender hand to that
when this darkness passes
and love is
victory
-Kat


Is there something you need to grieve and let love touch?
Open your heart, close your eyes and as you listen to this
beautiful piece below- surrender it.
If not, listen with thanks for the unrestrained love
that spoke your name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Ab0ci6UGQ&feature=related

He Will Rise And Come Looking For Us

STATION III - Weights and Measures
by Kevin Rolly

So soon…
(It wasn’t to be this soon)

He barely made the first hill
(I thought I could)

Messiah?
Messiah will overthrow the nations
Messiah will put our enemies to the sword
and give us our own kingdom
You cannot even walk

Messiah?
You are a liar…
and make a mockery of our hopes
Your followers will return to fishing
and your name forgotten by winter

Your kingdom will be in the beaks
of those that circle even now
on carrion wings

King, you tremble
(I am afraid)
King, you weep
(I am alone)

Why is this?

Or did God at last
create the rock
he could not lift?

Has God ever seemed to fall short of being the god you needed? The god you were expecting? You are not alone. The Christ of the Cross must have seemed anything but The Anointed, The Messiah, The One who would put Israel back on top and grind Rome to dust. Isaiah says, "We esteemed Him not."

Covered in open wounds it might have been easy to miss the power. Onlookers might be forgiven for thinking the nails were what was holding Him to the Cross. Sometimes I miss the point too. Sometimes I don't see Him for who He really is.

But this Jesus is not a god who stays where you put Him. He doesn't conform to our opinion of Him. This Jesus-God washes feet and feeds strangers. He touches lepers and menstrual women and dead sons and He is OK with them touching Him back.

This Jesus is the water-walker, the storm-silencer, the fish-finder, the wine-whisperer. Soldiers understand Him. Priests plot against Him. His heart belongs to Jerusalem. His lap belongs to children.

If you are confused or full of questions, if you come to Him in secret because, "What will people think?" you will not find a rebuke waiting. He might, rather, tell you a story or share a metaphor.

Sometimes we take His measure all wrong. Sometimes we miss the meaning. Sometimes we are the ones saying,"Well if you had just come sooner my brother wouldn't be dead."

No matter.

This crucified God is still God and on the third day He will rise just as He said. If we have minimized Christ, if we have measured Him all wrong, He will still rise. He will rise and come looking for us. He will deal with our sin and our difficulties in ways that are unexpected.

This is a God who made the enormous trip from unconfined divinity to God-in-the-flesh, human mortality to set thing right again, to show us the Father, to deliver us utterly and openly- so look long. Look closely. See Him for who He is. Ask the Spirit, who is our Teacher, to show you the real Jesus. The Jesus with a love that leashed Hell and opened Heaven. The Jesus that promised to be with us to the end of the age. The Jesus who holds tightly to those given to Him by the Father. To us.

This is the God who is present and accounted for every moment of our lives. The God who delights to be known. The God-mystery who is revealing Himself in the person of Christ whose Resurrection will eclipse our puny god thoughts. He has all the power He needs to keep us. Christ is always more than we think He is.

It is His delight to show us how much more.

To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. Jude 1:24-25


Purple Berries and Sunflowers, colored pencil on dark paper for Jackie's birthday

Do You Need An Earthquake?

Matthew 27:51-52 - At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. (NIV)

Are you ready for an earthquake in your life? Are you ready to have stubborn things, unmovable circumstances, deeply entrenched sin or disappointment rearranged by a supernatural and uncontrollable love quake? Me too. I had to think before I answered. It is that uncontrollable part.

Remember at supper when He identified Himself as the vine, us as its branches? Well, it is Good Friday and the vine is about to undergo a fierce, cataclysmic change. We are going to change if we remain connected. It can be no other way.


Come closer. Open your eyes and your heart and prepare for the shattering when that quake comes. What needs to be moved? What needs to die in your life? What needs to be finished? Today is the day it gives up the ghost.

Today love whispers and cries out and saves you.

Come to the Cross:

http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2010/04/good-friday-remembered.html


Sherry's Berries, Pencil and ink, drawn for my sister's birthday card -Kat

Burden Bearer-Ask The Animals Sundays

Who could confront me and get by with it?
I'm in charge of all this—I run this universe!
-God Speaking to Job, Job 41:11 MSG

Today is Palm Sunday, and also Passion Sunday: today’s little parade is fanfare, prelude, signaling the arrival of the unholy circus we call Holy Week — whose climax is not three rings but three Roman crosses, stabbed in bloody relief against Jerusalem’s skyline, an eclipse of justice so cosmic as to be mirrored in the heavens on a festival Friday afternoon.

With populist fanfare Jesus descends from the Mount of Olives into the valley of the shadows of his death. And we too, following, make our own sharp descent into the maelstrom of the week’s intrigue.

It is hard work, the work before us this week. If Jesus’ first followers found themselves wishing to go back to the good days before the unpleasantness began or, like us, jumping ahead to the glory they might have imagined lay ahead, like them we have to remain here for a while. For this hour, to this place, this coming trouble — this is where Jesus journeys, and all his disciples, like it or not, must journey with him.

- Thomas R. Steagald

From pages 122-124 of Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus

In about the time it took to create the world Jesus would destroy "this" temple and rebuild it, death would be defeated, Heaven opened and mankind would be reconciled to God. Today begins the last leg of His journey that began with Mary's, "Be it done to me as you have said."

Jesus rides into Jerusalem on an unbroken donkey that has never yielded to the weight of a man. A donkey, who like the man riding it was found at the crossroad of two different ways. Like Jesus, the donkey yields and allows the weight to be laid upon its back. I often wondered if Jesus, the sin-bearer, grew heavier the closer He got to the city.

It was all "Hosanna" today but soon it would be treasonous betrayal, the cursing of a friend, the lash, the thorns and the nails. I think I just answered my own question. Much, much heavier. Didn't He even say as much later when sorrow overwhelmed Him? Still the little donkey keeps faith with Him just as the one did that carried Mary, great and swollen with child, so long ago.

As I was reading the Palm Sunday message in John 12:12-19 and the other gospels, I was struck by the thought that I do not lend such easy obedience to the plan of God. There are moments when that donkey shames my fickle profession. Times when God has needed to confront me with, "I run this universe!"

If I follow Christ to Jerusalem and ultimately to the Cross, if I allow myself to remember that the Creator of the Universe, the in-charge One, humbled Himself for us; if I consider His sacrifice and gift, His perfect obedience, then my shouted, "Save Now" means something. I desperately need it to.


So lead on little friend. Carry my Savior and carry my hopes. Carry us into Holy Week and a place of remembrance. Hosanna in the Highest. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.


-Kat

Ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;
let the birds tell you what's going on.
Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.
Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.
Isn't it clear that they all know and agree
that God is sovereign? That He holds all things in His hand—
Every living soul, yes, every breathing creature.
Job 12:7-10

(Special thanks to Christian Jeter, age 7, for using her giftings for God-things. She has join me to produce Ask The Animals Sundays for Lent.)