Easter

A Little Cup of Soil

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I am never more amazed than when, after planting a seed, watering and waiting, a little green sprout pushes its way up toward the light.

It wasn’t looking so good for this particular little cup of soil though. The other three had just the right amount of water and light, but this one was drowning. My seven year old ran up to me with the mud sloshing around in the cup, tears in her eyes.

“Mom! Everyone else’s sunflower came up but mine! I think I added too much water!” She was heartbroken. I double-checked the tray, and sure enough, three sunflower sprouts were reaching for the sunshine and the fourth was barren.

“Hmm,” I mused. “Let me see what we can do.” I wasn’t so sure it would work. In her excitement for trying her hand at gardening, she dropped the cup right after planting the seeds and then watered it within an inch of its little plant life. 

I carefully poured out some of the standing water, absorbed the rest with a paper towel and gently shook the cup to loosen the solid mass of soil that was left. We set the cup back on the tray in the light, hoping for the best.

Every day, I received the daily plant report: “nothing”.

Then, just a few days later, the story changed. “MOM! It’s coming up!”

Two tiny light green specks appeared in the middle of the black earth, pressing on through obstacles the other plants had never seen! These sunflowers were determined to succeed despite being dropped, losing half their soil and nearly drowning.

This little cup of soil burst with new life the week before Easter and it’s not lost on me. In His mercy, the Lord uses ordinary things to remind me of who He is. In John 11, Jesus meets Martha on the road after her brother Lazarus died, and they have a short conversation about resurrection. She tells Him that if He had been there, her brother would not have died, but even now she knows who He is.

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’

‘Yes, Lord,’ she replied, ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.’ ” (John 11:25-27 NIV)

She has faith in Jesus to do the impossible, and shortly after, He does. Lazarus is raised to life again by a word. Jesus calls him and he walks right out of that grave, still wearing those strips of linen around his hands and feet and face. Jesus says ,“Take off the grave clothes and let him go”. And the Pharisees begin to plot to get rid of Jesus.

He knew what He was doing, and it was all motivated by love. Often, I’ve read Ephesians 2 and have been stopped in my tracks by various phrases in the first ten verses:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:1-10 NIV)

Because of Christ, no longer do we have to wonder if the seeds are going to sprout! He is not just our great example of how to love our neighbour as ourselves; He is our salvation. It is His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead that gives us true life! 

We can walk through this earthly experience continually laying down our lives with joy, carrying a hope that cannot be deterred by circumstances, knowing that one glad morning we will wake up in the presence of the One who made us, knows us, loves us and gave His life for us so that our fellowship with Him can never be broken.

Hallelujah, what a Saviour! He is Risen!

Little sprouts (image: mine)

The In-Between Season

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March may be considered spring in some parts of the world, but not here. We know better. 

In these parts we keep our winter boots next to our sandals. Our snow shovels coexist with our garden rakes. Up and down we go in a dance, swinging from a glorious glimpse of warmth and sunshine to wild blast of snow and ice and back again. 

I used to strongly dislike it.

I grew up in a part of the country that had distinct seasons. When winter came, summer trappings were tucked away for the next six months and cold weather gear took their place next to the door. After months of icicles on our eyelashes, northern lights dancing and pastel-coloured morning skies where ice crystals sparkled in the soft sunshine, the blue skies of April finally dawned and our bikes and sandals slowly emerged along with the migratory birds. 

When I moved here, I couldn’t understand how people lived with such volatile weather. You never knew what you’d wake up to, no matter how hard the forecast tried, especially in spring. It has taken several of these wild seasons to adjust to the carefree elements that come with living in the shadow of the mountains, where the heavy spring snow and the warm spring melt happen just a few hours apart. In fact, I’ve come to rather enjoy the ride.

The warmth of the March sun is invigorating, reminding me to live in the moment and take my kids out into the muddy puddles while we still have them. And when the snow brings much-needed moisture to our dry soil, we welcome it as a gift, knowing that it won’t last.

There is beauty in every season.

This week, I saw my first winter-white bunny with hints of brown, noticed the buds on the trees preparing to burst into bloom many weeks from now, heard the trickle of flowing water as the sun hugged the icicles on the roof.

And then, snow and cold returned, this time slowly and with the mysterious beauty of an icy veil. In the afternoon hours of a rather foggy, snowy day, we emerged from our house and made our way along our rather ordinary street, transformed into a Narnia-like wonderland after hours of winter mist.

Stunning. Magical. Absolutely enchanting.

“Wow! Look at that the trees! They’re so beautiful!” My seven year old’s eyes were wide with wonder, drinking in the living winterscape around her.

Thank You Lord for the constant reminder of Your love and care. For Your handiwork, evident in the frost-covered branches of a tree, gently hanging in the stillness of a cold early March afternoon. For praise uttered from the lips of children captivated by the world You have made. For these moments that pierce our hearts with Your glory. For Your gift of common grace that reveals beauty in every season. But most of all, for how all of these things point us to You as our true source of life.

This is the in-between season, not fully winter, not fully spring. It’s not lost on me that this season coincides with our journey toward Easter, an invitation to prepare our hearts for the most pivotal point in history and the central reason for our faith. As we consider humanity and the condition we find ourselves in, may the gradual lengthening and warming of the days remind us that our hope lies only in the saving grace made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. May we place our faith in Him, experiencing the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, empowering us to live out the love of Christ in our regular, everyday challenges and triumphs.

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” 

Ephesians 4:1-6 (NIV)

Image: Stocksnap

Lessons from a Mug

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This is the one I couldn’t put back together.

Earlier this week, I placed an empty white coffee mug on the lower shelf of a small table and promptly forgot it was there. A few days later, we needed to move the table.

“What’s your mug doing there, Mom?” my third child asked. I glanced over at the coffee table that held my small blue flowery tea mug from the night before. 

“Yeah, I don’t know, I guess I forgot to put it away,” I answered as I lifted the other small table and moved it quickly, inadvertently flinging the white mug across the room. It landed with a loud smash on the basement floor, white shards spraying over a wide area as the kids cried out in chorus, “MOM! Your favourite mug!”

“Oh THAT mug,” I winced. I sighed. It was true, I did love that mug.

“That’s the one I was talking about!” Number Three cried. “I tried to tell you!”

“Aw I am so sorry! You DID try to tell me and I didn’t understand!” 

“We can fix it!” 

“No,” I said gently as I placed the pieces in a small cardboard box, “this one I can’t fix.”

Since then, my own words have been echoing in my heart.

This one I can’t fix.

The careless word or action. The uncontrollable circumstance or sudden turn of events. The sin that breaks a heart into a million pieces.

Grief washes over me in giant paralyzing waves. Other times it slows to a trickle, and still other times it’s a dull ache that lingers when my mind turns to those things I simply cannot remedy in my life. The things I can’t fix, no matter how hard I try. I need comfort and healing, which find in Jesus. But I’m finding that I also desperately need the hope that one day it won’t be like this anymore. One day, all will be made right. 

We have a Healer and Comforter who tends to the deepest wounds of the heart and brings restoration from destruction. But He is also a Warrior King who has wiped out the sin that entangles and the death that separates forever — the very source of our grief and sorrow. Only He can make “justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24).

And He has done it.

It is finished. 

Romans 5:1-12 says,

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

Hallelujah! On this Holy Week we remember the cost of such love and fall down in worship of the One who willingly gave up His life so that we could be healed and restored forever and the world could be made new.

Living in the now and the not-yet is full of heartbreak and grief, but the glowing coals of everlasting joy are alive in us. We pray that the Holy Spirit will fan it into flame and incline our hearts to the One who has already redeemed what we ourselves are powerless to fix so that we may give glory to Jesus forever!

My broken mug teaching me life lessons.

Lessons from a Blue Hydrangea

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Sometimes the most ordinary things bring us to an extraordinary realization that moves our hearts.

Fresh Easter flowers have become a tradition for me. I usually opt for white tulips, Easter lilies or daffodils, but this year I was on the hunt for something else. I had noticed someone else’s gorgeous blue hydrangea in the spring sunshine one afternoon on the weekend before Easter and immediately I knew I wanted one for our table.

A few days before Easter, I brought one home, pulled off the plastic and set it in the centre of our old dining room table. It was huge. The blooms burst forth and my heart sang! But within two days, it looked tired and sad.

I tend to become an overenthusiastic plant parent, loving each and every plant I’ve ever had to death with my daily watering and pruning, so this time I decided to do a bit of reading up on how to care for a potted hydrangea.

Turns out, blue hydrangeas have a few demands: bright but not direct sunlight, warm but not too warm, and soil that’s not dried out.

On Maundy Thursday, Blue looked like she was about to give up the ghost. I was annoyed that Easter was yet to come and this plant was about to die before her big moment on the Easter dinner table! So I moved her to the back where the air was cooler and gave her a nice drink of water, just hoping she would survive until Good Friday.

She rallied.

It happened again on Saturday morning. So I repeated my remedy and she rallied again.

Easter dinner came and went and Blue brought the beauty of God’s amazing creation to our little home.

Here’s the thing I can’t get over – this blue hydrangea continually finds itself on the brink of death. I bring it to a cool place and give it a drink, and soon her blooms are full.

How many times have I felt parched and dry, wilting and waning, wondering how my heart will ever be revived again? And then, by the power of His Spirit through the truth of His Word I am reminded that Jesus is the Living Water!

Drink deep today, friends. Drink deep. Let the truth of God’s Word speak to your heart and be thirsty no more. Let Easter be more than just a story we hear in the springtime and quickly move on to home renovations and summer plans.

I need the bigger story that Easter promises. I need to know that when I go to Jesus, I can trust that He really is the Living Water my heart so desperately needs because He IS God and he has been raised to life again. The power of sin has been broken and death has been conquered.

1 Corinthians 15:55-57 (NIV) —

“Where, O death, is your victory?

    Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the words of my dad, “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”

Blue

Still looking great after a week in my care. Amazing.

Mama, You Love Jesus?

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As we move into Holy Week, starting this weekend with Palm Sunday right through to next weekend with Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning, I am sharing something I wrote a few Good Fridays ago. I am thankful that I captured this memory; it still touches me even though we’re moving into a different season with our kids. If you are in a time of your life right now where Easter feels like just another thing to get through, I pray that as you “pass by Jesus on the cross”, He makes an impact on you right where you are. 

Let me set the scene for the following story: I was bone-tired. Between parenting a four year old and a two year old, we were facing a long and uncertain road with our three month old who was in the middle of treatments for a concerning and very rare genetic condition that had come as a surprise after she was born.

I felt like the billows were rolling in the sea of our life. 

I was hanging on to Jesus with white knuckles and it was bringing me to my knees.

***

Yesterday my oldest daughter asked me, “Mama, you love Jesus?”

With tears in my eyes, I answered, “yes, I do love Jesus.”

And then I wept.

It had been a day already (if you know what I mean), and it was only 10am.  We were sitting at the table with little yogurt cups, some strawberries and a bit of banana bread we had baked together the day before.

For almost the entire hour beforehand, we battled.  And we were all exhausted.

As we ate, I responded to yet another question about Easter, explaining the good news for probably the sixth time this week.  Daily questions about who Jesus is, why He died, why He rose, what it all means… Lord have mercy!  I didn’t know you needed a theology degree to have kids!

That’s when she looked up across the table at me with those big blue eyes and said, “Mama, you love Jesus?”

It broke me.  I nearly couldn’t pull myself back together.  My middle girl said, “Mama, don’t cry!  Are you crying?”

“Yes,” I said. “But not because I am sad.  I am crying because I really do love Jesus very much.”

Easter usually turns out to be a very emotional season for me. It’s where the depth of my need meets the breadth of a love I cannot fathom, and that truth pierces my heart in unexpected moments where I see its transformative power in action.

The day continued on in its ups and downs late into the evening, with a few glimpses of glory.  But most of it was made of moments that made me whisper, “Grace, Jesus.  Your grace.  Only Your grace today.”

The next morning, my body felt broken.  I was up a couple of times in the night, and my eyes were puffy from crying tears of exhaustion.

Church?  People?  No thanks.  Besides, we already did communion with the kids at the table this morning.  Grape juice and homemade white bread.

But it was Good Friday.  Part of my heart wanted to be at church, even though I knew I probably would not be able to sit through the service with the two youngest kids.  So I swallowed my pride over feeling like I needed to look capable and we did it.  And let’s face it, the truth shines through in all its radiance with three energetic kids 4 and under, a mom-ponytail and a baggy sweatshirt because my other jacket still doesn’t quite fit after having our latest cherub-cheeked girlie. I went solo because my husband had to work.

Walking into that church, I already knew I wouldn’t catch much of the Good Friday service.

But somewhere in the middle of cuddling a baby and entertaining a toddler with sniffles in a room on the side of the sanctuary, my heart was lifted by what I heard through the speaker piping in the message from the other room:

“Even those who passed by Jesus up on that cross were impacted by Him.”

Passing Him by.  That’s exactly how it feels sometimes when you’re in the thick of raising tiny humans.

But I say this with certainty:  even if you feel like you’re just passing by Jesus today, with all the things that life and seasons bring, He makes an impact on you.

I tried to take the two youngest into the sanctuary for communion, but the baby started fussing and our toddler chose that moment, that holy moment before communion, to start shouting, “NOOOO! I don’t WANT to whisper!”

So we headed back to the side room.

I may not have been able to get to the church communion table this morning, but He met me at the kitchen table.

In a place I did not expect.

cross and heart

An Easter craft by one of my children a few years ago.

The Season is Changing

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Anyone else stumbling around in a post-time change fog this week?

Yikes.

I read once that it takes three weeks to fully adjust to a new schedule, so hopefully by the end of the month we’ll be caught up on the sleep we’ve missed!

Give me all the daylight, though. Every day we’re getting closer to 10pm sunsets and 5am sunrises, and the twilight hours that fill the hours in between. We’ll be making up for the winter darkness.

I smelled mud the other day and I remembered spring. It took me by surprise. I was in a parking lot and the heavy, earthy scent drifted past, bringing with it a sudden swell of hope! Same with the sound of water trickling through the downspout as the snow melts off the roof.

Ordinary evidence that the season is changing, and with it, the things we spend our time and energy on.

It’s the Lenten season. I recently read a Lent devotional that seemed to pit personal times of worship against serving the least of these in our community, as if the former is selfish and the latter is spiritual. It seemed to say that reading our Bibles and spending time in prayer is meant to somehow impress God with our efforts to be holy, when our energies would be better spent serving those among us who are truly in need.

It broke my heart.

When we put our faith in Christ, the Bible teaches that we become Christ’s righteousness before God. When God looks at us, He doesn’t see our vain efforts to impress, He sees Jesus.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 says,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

So why should we view the Lenten season as some sort of exercise in spiritual pride, bent on giving us brownie points with God? If that’s what Lent is for you, I strongly recommend you rethink this season.

That last verse gets me every single time: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. When we understand exactly what Jesus did for us, we no longer see these seasons of examining our hearts and engaging in repentance and renewal as an effort to impress Him with how spiritual we are. We fall down in worship, fully surrendering our proud hearts and recognizing that there is no other Person who can bring us back in to a right relationship with a Holy Creator to whom we owe the very breath in our lungs.

I will say, though, that these times of worship must bring about lasting change in our hearts! And out of that change comes minds that are transformed by the truth of God’s Word, hearts that are open to the Holy Spirit, eyes that are searching for opportunities to put Christ’s love in action, and hands that are ready to serve Him by serving others.

I think the author of the Lent devotional is right in pointing out that inaction is a grave mistake that we would do well to pay attention to. But I am sad when I see worship and service pitted against each other.

In the weeks leading up to Easter I’ve begun to read the Gospels of Luke and John, once again re-living the life of Christ and praying that God will move in my heart through the story spread out on the pages. My heart has been stunned and amazed and encouraged by Jesus! And most often, I am finding that service of the least of these consists of pouring practical love on the very people that are right in front of me.

frozen bunny tracks

I found these frozen animal tracks one morning.

How Could He?

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We sat on the soft couch in the early spring sunshine, huddled around a storybook Bible for kids.

“How could he?” she cried. Our five year old was hearing, really hearing for the first time, that God looked away from Jesus for a moment while He was on the cross.

“His own son! How could He look away from His own son?” Her bottom lip quivered and her brow sunk low. I could see tears forming behind her glasses. “Why, Mama, why did He do that?” She covered her face.

I put my arm around her. “It is very sad, isn’t it?” I said. I tried to explain how Jesus took our sin on Him, and that God couldn’t look at sin, so He had to look away. “But why did He do that?” she wailed.

She wasn’t asking for the theological explanation.

She was asking why it had to happen like this – why even the Father left Jesus utterly alone.

At our house, Easter always brings out the toughest questions about why Jesus had to die and how He could take away all of our sins. It’s this strange mix of egg hunts and execution, bunnies and burial cloths. And then, the great exhale of wonderful relief when we learn that Jesus, who was once dead, has come back to life again.

We live in this tension between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

We suffer the fallen nature of the world and the effects of sin while we await the glorious fulfillment of His promise of eternal life.

In the between time, we work to stay faithful to Him and build His kingdom in a world with a kingdom of its own, the kind that shouts you are a dangerous fool if you believe in anything other than the tangible and material, if you stand for something other than yourself, if you entrust your life to Someone instead of your emotions and feelings.

“In this world you will have trouble – but take heart, I have overcome the world!” – Jesus (John 16)

Jesus, as we remember Your sacrifice and victory this Easter weekend, let us be strengthened by the Holy Spirit to worship You in the face of doubt and questions. Let those questions and struggles remind us that while we don’t know everything, You do. And that is precisely why we bow in worship -You are God, Your love is unchanging, and You will never forsake us.

Jesus Storybook Bible

Image: “The Jesus Storybook Bible”, Sally Lloyd-Jones/Jago

On Palm Branches and Dashed Hopes

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palm leaf

As we were pulling up to church one Palm Sunday a few years ago, we realized we forgot something.  Time was tight, so I dropped the kids off with my husband and took the baby with me to run back and get it.  I thought I might be able to make it back in time.

But I missed it.

My favourite part of Palm Sunday:  the Kids Palm March.

On the Sunday before Easter, the kids get to wave Palm branches and march around the church during the first few worship songs.  When they get to the front, the branches are placed in a glass vase of water sitting under a wooden cross draped with purple fabric.

Amid the frustration of running back home, the disappointment of returning too late, and the general isolation of being a mom of a little one who is too noisy and busy for the service and too sniffly to play in the nursery, I felt sad.

My heart was heavy as I followed my little one around the back of the gym, praise music filling my ears.  My eyes scanned the front and settled on the cloth-draped cross with the large beautiful palm branches sitting beneath it, and strangely, I understood.

Those palm branches held such hope for the people who had waved them by a dusty road into Jerusalem so long ago.

Hope that never came to fruition.

The King of Kings riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, welcomed by crowds expecting a political revolution.

Only days later, the King of Kings, mocked, beaten, left to die on a rough wooden cross.

Here’s what a palm branch looks like the day AFTER it has been waved with great enthusiasm.

shrivelled palm.png

Spent.  Tired.  Shrivelled.

And rightly so.  Palm branches are not meant to last forever.  Our hope was never in a palm branch.

Our hope is in the King of Kings.

And the rest of the story is still coming.