Good Friday

Can you imagine the despair that Jesus' followers, friends, and family must have felt on this night about 2,000 years ago? Not only was their dear friend, brother, son or teacher gone, but with him died their hopes and dreams. The scoffers laughed, the uninterested shrugged, but the hearts of the faithful broke. We know the end of the story, but they did not. Their sorrow must have been overwhelming. Once the sorrow had fully sunk in, the fear took its place with a mighty rush. We know that the Twelve locked themselves in a back room,  because this was where Jesus found them later. It was a dark time.
     And yet, as they suffered the agony of grieving and of they unknown, the spiritual world was exploding. Something big was happening, something wonderful and too beautiful to describe....

Blood

What do a boiled egg, a lamb, wine, and blood have in common? Passover. This is Passover week—the week that Judaism remembers the Exodus and Christianity remembers the death and resurrection of Christ. There are so many beautiful parallels in the Passover feast. Tonight, I put on a Seder meal for my family  (real and adopted) and was struck once again by God’s amazing design. If you ever have a chance to experience a Passover celebration, do it! You will never look at either the Exodus account or the Last Supper the same again. Just as the unblemished lamb was slaughtered at the Temple each year to commemorate the first Passover lambs whose blood took the place of firstborn sons, Jesus blood was shed the very same day at the very same hour. He hung on the cross for as long as the sacrificing in the Temple went on, and just as the high priest would say when the last lamb had been sacrificed, Jesus said just before He died, “it is finished.” He is our unblemished, sinless lamb, the one who takes our place. He is our High Priest, the one who goes to God the Father on our behalf. Because of Him, we can have confidence that we will live. We have no fear of condemnation! Praise be to God for the blood of the Lamb.

Palm Sunday

As I was reading and reflecting on the account of Jesus' triumphal entry in Luke 19, I was thinking about Jesus' emotions during this whole affair. As he entered the city on the borrowed colt, as the crowds carpeted His way with palm branches and cried out the words of the Psalmist, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord," He knew that on a week everything would change. I find it interesting that in the next passage, Christ looks over Jerusalem, weeping for what He knows will happen to it. He speaks of the coming destruction-- which happened with Titus' destruction of the city in 70 AD--and is grieved at their rejection of Him and the consequences of this rejection. What strikes me… Continue Reading

One Week to Easter

Only one more week until Easter! I don’t know about you, but for me, this has been a fast year. I have been looking forward to this week—for me, it is spring break, and every college student needs a week off now and then. I have been thinking about it for another reason, too. Holy week has been on my mind. I feel like I normally treat it like any other week and go about my business, letting Easter take me off guard. Sometimes I observe Lent to prepare my heart and to keep my mind on Easter and what it represents. This year, I totally forgot to check my calendar and by the time I remembered Lent, it was halfway over. So much for that. I don’t want to let Easter catch me off guard, too! So, I want to do something this Holy Week to keep it in my mind and on my heart.



      It’s not so much about the day—the observation of festivals and traditions does not impress God and if it is hollow, it is only legalism. It is about what Easter means for us, for what was done for us on Friday and the implications of what happened on Sunday. It is about the incomprehensible sacrifice that Jesus gave and the joyous miracle of his arising on the third day! I want to take that to heart and think of it in a new and refreshing way this year. I want to connect with my savior and catch a glimpse of the Holy, falling on my knees in awe of His sacrifice in light of His glory.

Will you join me this week?

Nearsighted

They look to the sky
Blue
Blue
Blue
The earth is
Green
Yellow
Brown
They worry
They hunger
They go barefoot

And in the city,
A business woman gripes
That grapes
Have gone up
Seventy-five cents.

Spilled Blood

At the time that Mark's gospel was written, horrific persecution was assailing the Church. I cannot even wrap my brain around the horrors that Christians suffered under Nero and Titus—the atrocities of the torture and killing is just too much for my cushy-Western-sheltered-American mind to comprehend. It is easy to read things like this academically, and just pass unemotionally over the words on the page, as we do while reading history books about wars we never heard of and never cared about. However, we cannot just read the words and ignore the content. The reality is that Christian persecution is not history; it has been going on for two thousand years and it has not stopped. People today are being killed for their faith. As you read these words, somebody is DYING because they love Jesus. Stop reading and think about that for a moment. Do you get that ? Do you really comprehend that? Someone’s heart just stopped beating. Somebody’s child is fatherless or motherless. There is a widow or a widower whose world just collapsed. A congregation just lost a pastor or a beloved church member. There is a gunshot, an explosion, or a machete. Somewhere, there is a dark red bloodstain. And that blood belongs to someone who is your brother or sister.

      Maybe I am being a little intense. That is actually my point. Did you know that there is a Christian murdered by a Muslim extremist every five minutes? That is over 100,000 every year. And that is not including people killed by other hostile groups. This is a REAL, and it’s going on NOW. Human torches and gladiatorial-style events may be a thing of the past, but suicide bombers and ax murders are a thing of the present. While you and I are sitting in our offices, bedrooms, dens or dorms in our cushy chairs, contemplating whether it is worth risking friendships to talk about Jesus, there are people out there who are dying for their witness. While we are complaining about the amount of homework we have and bemoaning our work schedules, there are people who are suffering the loss of their loved ones in hiding and in silence. I am not saying this to give a guilt trip – we are blessed here, and that is just a fact. Praise God! I am saying this because Christians in Mali, Cuba, Iran, Libya, China, India, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Belarus, Uzbekistan and many other nations need your prayers. They need your support and your awareness. There is nothing more powerful than an intercessory prayer made out of genuine love for a brother in need. Pray for Asia Bibi, who is being imprisoned in Pakistan. Pray for her husband and two daughters. Pray for Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese Christian who has been in and out of government incarceration for years. Pray for the Indonesian church, and pray for Muslims—pray for the small percentage of radicals who are doing the violence, and pray for the peaceful majority, who are hurt by the evil deeds of the few and who have little exposure to the truth of the gospel. Pray that God will break your heart for what breaks His-- let your heart and your spirit be rent and ripped for your brothers and sisters who are persecuted.

You Deserve This

 

Really? I do?

Now, why on earth would I deserve that? Did I do a heroic act of service that saved the fate of Wendy’s stores everywhere? Is it because I was born a middle-class individual (which intimates that everyone not born in a first-world country gets less because they deserve less)? Is hot, juicy, and tasty food at 2:00 AM a basic human right?

      I am pretty sure that I don’t deserve 24-hour burger availability. Even though I might pay the two bucks or whatever it costs to purchase this piece of GMO, fat-saturated, processed cow (?) meat in a bun, I still don’t “deserve” it because I don’t “deserve” the money in the first place. I may have scrubbed dishes and mopped floors for fifteen minutes to get the money, but I don’t even “deserve” the precious opportunity to have a job and I certainly don’t “deserve” the laws in place that assure me fair wages. I “deserve” nothing; I didn’t give two cents to get into this world, and it doesn’t owe me a thing. The only thing I deserve is Hell.

     Many of us know the Bible verse that tells us “the wages of sin is death.” In other words, I’ve messed up on some level at some point, and I deserve to suffer eternal death in Hell for it. But here’s the good part! Just like I do have the undeserved opportunity to have a job, live in a good country, and eat a burger for breakfast if I want to, I also have the undeserved opportunity to escape the punishment for sin. The rest of the verse above says, “…but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We deserve the punishment, but instead we are extended the ultimate gift…. Grace. The very essence of the word “grace” IS undeserved. We can’t earn it; we can never in a million years deserve it. I don’t “deserve” a juicy, hot burger, and I am a hundred thousand times less deserving of this beautiful gift of eternal life.

     Just as I will probably not choose to take advantage of the midnight burger option, many will turn down the option of undeserved life. Sadly, unlike the burger (which will almost certainly contribute to high blood pressure), the gift of eternal life is the most beautiful, beneficial, wonderful and essential part of human existence. If there is anyone reading this who has not taken advantage of the undeserved gift of grace, I hope that you will stop and do so now. The Bible says to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” This means that all you have to do is take God at his word—believe what He said, which is that Jesus Christ (God Himself) became a man and took our punishment for sins. He died so that we don’t have to suffer eternal death. Then after three days of being dead, God gave him new life and he emerged from the grave! If you want to know more or you are completely confused about what I am talking about, I’d love to explain it better. My email is breezie@becominggodlymaidens.com .

     Don’t buy into the lie of advertisers everywhere—you deserve nothing. And neither do I. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we will be able to appreciate our privileges, the greatest of which is the grace we have been given.