Exploring thoughts with purpose ℠
The only real knowledge is who you really are – a spiritual being created in the image and likeness of a loving God. If you know that, everything you do will honor the wisdom and beauty you already own.
– Alan Cohen, I Love You As You Are
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never fail you nor forsake you.” Hence we can confidently say,
– Hebrews 13:5-8
“The Lord is my helper,
I will not be afraid;
what can man do to me?”
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
– Psalm 104:33-34
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
May my meditation be pleasing to Him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
– Alleluia! Alleluia! Let the Holy Anthems Rise,
Like the sun from out the wave,
He has risen up in triumph
From the darkness of the grave!
He’s the splendor of the nations,
He’s the lamp of endless day.
He’s the very Lord of Glory
Who has risen up today!
lyrics by Edward Caswall
God is light; in Him there is no darkness. …
– You Have Put on Christ by Chrysogonous Waddell
Come to Him and receive His light!
…
God calls you His own children and that is what you are.
Happy Easter!
Mary Mag′dalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men.
But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Then go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead, and behold, He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him. Lo, I have told you.”
So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell His disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Hail!” And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”
– Matthew 28:1-10
Behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with Him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
– Matthew 27:51-54
This is the day we’re in right now liturgically: pained at the crucifixion. Yet, unlike the fear of the centurion, we wait in hope because we know our Savior will rise on the third day.
May we all take this time to reflect on the glories of the Lord, to give thanks for His unending love, and to return to God with our whole hearts.
“Yet even now,” says the Lord,
– Joel 2:12-13
“return to Me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed.
– Matthew 17:22-23
Happy Good Friday!
Blessed Good Friday? That sounds more appropriate. It is a very solemn day, after all, as we recognize (celebrate?) the brutal torture and crucifixion of God come down as Man. Can it really be a good day when we’re talking about the murder of any innocent life, let alone someone perfect and all-loving?
Strangely, yes.
So, for anyone tuning in not familiar with the term Good Friday, it’s effectively the culmination of the Lenten season. We spent all of Lent getting ready for this weekend: Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. On Easter Sunday, we celebrate Christ’s conquering of death through His resurrection. Yay! Happy day! Clearly Easter is a time of celebration!
And for Jesus to rise from the dead, He first had to become one of the dead. He had to die to rise. This makes sense logically. But why did He have to rise from the dead in the first place?
The short answer: to save us from ourselves.
In a previous series, we looked at the seven deadly sins and the virtues that combat them. Our working definition for sin is anything that turns our focus away from God. What we didn’t deeply discuss was the impact of sin on our lives. We didn’t go into how our choices to sin impact not only our relationship with God but also our relationships with those whom we love and the relationship we have with ourselves. I’m not going to short shrift this discussion by attempting to squish it in with the Good Friday discussion, so here’s the one-liner…
Sin hurts all of it, everything, everyone, cutting us off from our true, amazing selves as well as God and the people we love.
We mess up sometimes. That’s not a shocker, is it? It also probably comes as no surprise that messing up hurts the people we care about. For the sake of simplicity, let’s take a simple example: if you stab your friend’s hand while doing a knife trick, your friend probably won’t trust you with sharp objects for a while. Physical pain is a pretty solid deterrent for dangerous behavior because most people dislike being in physical pain.
In a similar way, when we sin, we withdraw ourselves from God. When we sin, we pull away from others, even the person we want to be. God doesn’t want us to feel isolated and unloved! God loves us more than we can begin to comprehend! God always has His merciful hand extended for guidance to lead us back to Him. God is merciful love.
God is also just. He abounds in mercy, but so, too, does He abound in justice. Mercy and justice are two sides of the same coin: something cannot be merciful if justice has not been properly applied. For a penalty to be merciful, the decision must first be rendered on whether the action was wrong, how much harm it caused, and the proper range of recourse. A two-year prison sentence might be considered lenient, forgiving, and merciful for some crimes and extremely harsh for others. Justice must be recognized for mercy to have an opportunity.
Justice, in this case, condemns us all to death for our sins. God did everything for us, and yet, through original sin, we turned away. We decide (on a recurring basis) that either we know better than God or that God doesn’t love us as much as He should. We decide, for whatever reason, that we are better off going about life without following the instructions God set for us.
Bad decisions happen.
God constantly calls us back.
So we try again. We decide, okay, that wasn’t the best idea after all. Maybe if I trust God in this one issue, we can move forward. Good on you! That’s awesome! God extended His merciful hand, and you are trying again. Marvelous!
Justice must still be paid.
For the wrongs we commit, and for the wrongs that all of humanity commits, there is a penalty. We owe everything and failed to give it, and the penalty for that is death.
But God wants to save us.
God, in His perfect justice, knew that the blood price had to be paid. God, in His perfect mercy, offers His hand to any who will return to Him. And God, in His perfect wisdom, knew precisely how to both extract justice and grant mercy.
God gave us His only begotten Son, Jesus, to die an excruciating death in our place. Jesus suffered a torturous day of sentencing, beatings, mockery, bloodletting, abandonment, and every kind of pain imaginable. And then He died. Jesus died on the cross that first Good Friday so that we can return to Him and the Father.
Today’s sorrow comes from the death of Jesus.
Today’s joy is that God loves us so much that He decided to take our place on that cross.
Remember on this solemn day that there is still joy. We know that Jesus rises on the third day. We know that because Jesus died and rose on the third day, there is hope. There is hope. There is hope in every difficulty, in every dark alley, in every agonizing moment, in every forced half-smile, in every wince, in every fear. In every single situation, there is hope because my Savior lived, died, and rose from the dead to guide me back to Him. That is how much God loves me, how much God loves you. God loves each of us to the point of accepting death in the most painful manner possible to just give us a path in case we choose to return to Him.
Boundless love is always something to be joyful for.
Happy Good Friday.
Have you ever had one of those days where it felt like, even though you were diligent and persistent and insightful and thorough and working your hardest, you seemed to be beating your head on a telephone pole as you stumbled around it? You know, like you’re going in circles and simultaneously running into a wall but you neither recognize the circle nor the wall until the reality crashes into you like a baby grand piano dropped off the skyscraper overhead?
So that was kind of me today. I thought I was doing great – until I got a call insisting I should have waited on sending something out. (Oddly enough, there were no criticisms of the work itself, and I couldn’t find anything I would have done differently after our conversation.) Then this little nitpick, and that little slight, and … was that a test to see if I was paying attention? Seriously?
A lot of little things built up today. As soon as I had a small pile, I took a deep breath and told myself that at least at the end of the day, I would have a little bit of time to talk to a particular friend who is excellent at cheering me up. Then, it hit me: not tonight – I have a commitment. I felt torn. I really wanted to talk to my friend, but I had a rare invitation to Mass in the middle of the corona-crazy. I couldn’t miss Mass. For a plethora of reasons, I couldn’t miss Mass.
So I ended my workday a little deflated; I tend to assume I can get everything in, but that wasn’t happening today.
Except it did.
After I return from Mass, I noticed he was still online. Weird. A little late. I pinged him to see what was up, and we started chatting. Altruistically, I pointed out the time, and I was grateful when he said he was staying up a little later tonight.
We chatted and played a game together, talking life and work and monotony and trials and tribulations as we fought bosses and their minions. Even though he’d had a rather rough day, it made me feel better just listening to him, connecting with him. In some ways, I can’t comprehend the issues he’s having. But in some respects, I know them all too well.
After a while, he sighs, clearly exhausted. “Alright. I really gotta get some sleep. Thanks for talking with me; you cheered me up.”
Me?! Cheered you up?
I was delighted I could be that person for him, that light shining through one of the tiny peepholes atop a deep, dank tunnel. But was I? What did I even do? Not even; let’s be real: he cheered me up just by talking to me, not to mention the content included some interest-piquing topics. You did what now? Aww, it’s so kind that you helped her out like that.
Whatever the reasons, we were both in the right place at the right time to properly help each other without it costing anything at all to ourselves. (… Okay, maybe it cost the sleep we each would have otherwise gotten. Fair play.) We each helped the other and the person offering didn’t lose anything for it. In fact, we each clearly gained from the experience.
When is the last time you did something so you could be rejuvenated but instead helped to rejuvenate someone else and came out feeling invigorated?