​I have been reading through the gospels about the crucifixion as I prepare Sunday School sermons leading up to Easter. Yesterday and today, I spent quite a bit of time reading through the chapters in the gospels leading up to the point where Christ died.


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I admit, it is incredibly hard to get through the story. I continually see an innocent man wrongly accused, political maneuvering, and tragic circumstances.

I love the change in the story as it moves from an innocent death to a realization that this death, this sacrifice, really is the Son of God giving up his life for others. 

As it turns upside down, love and grace win. Jesus is the beautiful sacrifice. His legacy is love, eternal life, good triumphing over evil, love winning over legalism.

And it got me thinking about legacy. What do I want my legacy to be?

I hope and pray my legacy to those around me will be a life that brings others into their own God-given grace. I hope that the power of grace that lives in me will encourage and help others to live out their own stories of grace and compassion. My story leads into other stories of how God changes lives and how those lives change others.

I believe that part of my legacy is in the words that I write so, here are some words to think about that I hope will encourage loved ones.

Live in Jesus. Walk your road with Him. Dance to music, cry with Him, learn from Him, be with him. Tell others about him.

Every day, every year that I know Him, He gets better. He gets better because I know more surely for who he is.

Jesus satisfies. His way brings peace and His love brings healing. Never allow circumstances to overshadow this reality. 

Celebrate life, every day, as often as you can. 

He has planted sunrises and had the sun set to remind you and I that He is there at the beginning of the day and at the end. 

When your burdens are heavy, He has your back and your front.

Don't waste time in the guilt of never being good enough. He is good enough, and your nearness to Him makes you good too. 

Give grace to everyone you meet. Bitterness kills the mind and soul. 

Don't take on the anger and guilt of others. Just wait patiently for darkness to pass. 

Remember that I am praying for you, believing in you, thanking God for you. The story of our lives together will be told forever throughout eternity.

Show others the love and grace of Jesus, and then, when hearts are open, tell them about how they may know Him. 

Teach your children and other children about Him every day and live with integrity in front of them because you are the first Bible they will ever read. You and I can pass on His messages and righteousness from one generation to another. 

Whatever you do, do it for God's glory. Create music, write books, cook meals, plant flowers, build websites. Do whatever God has gifted you to do. Use all that you have for his glory.

Like Paul, at the end, I want to say that I have fought the good fight and finished the course set out for me. It is a privilege to be able to walk hand in hand with Him everyday and to be a part of His Kingdom.

Dark tests do come, but remember they are temporary. He left us His peace, and He reminded us to take courage. 

Take courage. Hold fast. This trial will pass soon enough, and you will have an amazing story to tell.

Think of the feasting that is to come in heaven. Hold on to that in all trials. In the end, there is a party, a great feast, a beautiful rousing of other believers telling their stories of how HE changed it all. We will break the bread, drink the wine, celebrate His presence. 

​Believe and celebrate.

To say that His birth was opposed is to touch the limits of mortal language.  The mighty one has been hated since the pride of the bright one led many away.  Your world war comes close, but even then, believe me, you have no idea.

We sang that night as we had never sung before.  Those shepherds believed they were the primary audience.  True, they were important — the Mighty One has always favored the lowly.  But there was much going on that night.  The other reason we sang in the fields was to hallow the ground where Rachel would weep over her sons.  There the graves would be dug, the graves for the little boys of Bethlehem. 

Herod’s rage soon stripped dozens of firstborns from the breasts of their mothers.  Those so fresh from heaven, so quickly silenced.  Slaughtered like animals.  So much blood.

The town had no room for Mary, and Herod’s heart had no room for another king.  He would not share his glory.

Although we do not exist in time, there are moments when the affairs of earth are hard to endure.  Even Angels desire vengeance. 

“Vengeance is Mine,” declared the Mighty One.  “Justice is coming.  I need you to sing.”

And so we sang. What the shepherds heard as an anthem the innocents would hear as a lullaby.  We sang as we had never sang before. A song to bring Him safely into the world, a song to guide them safely from it, and a song to help Mary endure it:

Glory to God in the heavenly heights,                             
Fly, fly to the breast of the Father,                                     
This wrong will be righted,     
Jesus is here,                      
Peace to all men and women on earth                               
who please Him.                   
Rest, rest in the arms of the Father,                                  
His fury remembers,                
His love holds you dear.   

Many do not sing of this horror at Christmas.  That is understandable; it was an unspeakable deed.  But I remind you that His birth was opposed.  You have no idea.

(This version of the Christmas Story has been adapted from Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas by John Blasé)

The first week of Advent has been a flurry of activity.  Students are handing in assignments, last minute homework checks, christmas ornaments on the tree, stories being shared with the children, and very little reflection on HIM.

Flurries, busyness, activities, meals, and only a little of HIM.

Isn't that how it goes?  The season is planned, cookies are baked, prayers are said, meals are shared, and yet we seem to reflect only a little on the baby in the manger.

Advent is this season of waiting.  We are always waiting for Christ but the ache is more apparent in this season.

And then I heard "Silent Night".  For the first time, I was struck by the lines, "All is calm, All is bright."  These words do not seem in sync with one another at all.  They contrast, but it isn't jarring.  Together they evoke a longing and a curiosity.  

Whisper them together now, under your breath.  Really.  No one is listening.  "Calm and bright.  Calm and bright."  What do you feel?

Calm.  I feel peace.  Peace in His Presence.  Bright.  I feel light and lightness.  Together.  Calm and bright.  I feel peace, hope, and welcome.  I am expectant.  Another moment of immanence and transcendence.  

The calming peace of Christ lies in his nearness.  He has come.  He is here. He is close by. 

The brightness of hope is, in baby form, not too much too overwhelm.  His transcendence is a flame that could incinerate and stupefy the merest man or woman - but in the Christ child it is a bright gleam of hope that I am not afraid to be near.  Because "all is calm, all is bright," I can sleep in the heavenly peace of Christ.

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.  Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful..." John 14:27 NASB

During this season of joyful waiting, longing for the birth of Christ and the world's rebirth, I am struck by the beauty of it all.  The waiting and the longing, this spiritual homing device that has been placed in our hearts by God to lead us back to Him.  

As Psyche realizes in Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis), "It almost hurt me...like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty comes from...The longing for home."

Advent ache is real.  All is calm.  All is bright.  All is beautiful. As. We. Wait. For. Him.

It's been a while since I posted.  One of the reasons is that I can feel the Lord prompting me to write on beauty.  Not just physical beauty but internal beauty.  It's a huge topic, and this has been a challenge. To reflect on beauty and what it means from a Christian perspective, is to be faced with ugliness and sin.  I have been struggling with my own ugliness, my sin.

On beauty.  God doesn't leave us in our darkness, our failure, our ruins, our ugliness.  Confessions of needing Him as Lord and Savior changes us to something else.  Our darkness becomes light and we become a part of that light.  Our failures become something that is used for His success.  Our ruins become glorious as we call on Him.  Our ugliness becomes something beautiful.  

Physically beautiful people, beautiful things these are candy for the eyes.  These people and things have their place and they bring momentary pleasure.  Christ's beauty is not a momentary pleasure.

Christ's beauty is to face our own ugliness, our sin, and redeem it.  As we face our ugliness, Christ faces us with other uglies.  Injustice is all around us.  As we learn to face the ugliness of injustice, we learn to see as Christ sees.  We must look more deeply at something that by the world's standards is ugly and slowly discover that it is gem.  We see beauty as we learn service to others.  Beauty is found in the giving to others.

Christ teaches us sacrificial love.  He sacrificed himself for us. What defines beauty?  The nails on the cross defines beauty.  The broken ways of Christ define beauty.  

This verse is a passage that generates a lot of sermons and discussions around Easter.  Mary, distraught with grief over Christ’s death, is unable to recognize Him.  She sees Him, but doesn't recognize Him fully. 

First, she recognizes him as a servant.  Perhaps he was simply dressed, in a white tunic, scanty, old and worn.  The cloth may have been colored from the sweat of his body, tight fitting, short, as if it is a hand’s breath below the knee, looking thread-bare. He probably looked like a servant. There is something miraculous here to think about.  He had done the greatest labor and the hardest work there is.  

Secondly, she recognized him as the gardener.  He was the one who takes care of the garden, caring for fragile, new life in spring.  He digs and sweats, turning soil over and over.  He waters at the proper time.  He continues in his work, eventually making sweet streams to run, and fine plenteous fruit to grow.

 He was a servant in the garden on that day Mary saw him.  He was also a gardener.  By his labor—his passion, death, descent into Hades, resurrection and ascension—Christ reveals himself as the Master Gardener who gardens our humanity and returns us to health and newness of life.

“Mary!” Jesus said.  She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).                       
-John 20:16                 

Christ was recognized as a servant and a gardener, and then he revealed himself to Mary.  Christ is the ultimate servant.  He placed himself on a cross as a living sacrifice to all who would call on his name.  His life, death, resurrection, and ascension show his unbounding love for a lost humanity, transplanting us to a new garden where health and new life is embraced.  He is the Master Gardener.

A strange, disturbing, and, ultimately mind blowing path to joy.  We have now entered into the Holy of Holies of God's plan, our salvation, the week in which Jesus Christ offered Himself up as the sacrifice for the sins of the world, instituting and giving us His Holy Supper, taking His place in a grave, to take the sting of death away from the grave in which we will one day be. If you haven't been thinking about those precious days, read now, see Him in Scripture, and receive the Gift.

Palm Sunday - Christ rides in on a donkey.  Palm branches are waved in front of him.  People recognize him, crown him.

Monday - Christ overturned tables in the temple.  He was angry.  He cursed a fig tree.

Tuesday - The disciples see the cursed fig tree on their way back to Jerusalem from Bethany.  Christ, unafraid, confronted Jewish leaders.  The plot to kill him begins.

Wednesday - Chief priests, elders, and scribes continue to plot and He continues to teach.  Satan enters Judas.  The darkness of story is about to unfold as Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread approaches.

Thursday - Christ reinterprets Passover. He breaks bread and shares wine with his disciples.  Communion.  A new ritual.

Friday - A death kiss from Judas early Friday morning.  Peter denied him three times.  Pain, hurt, anger, the weight of it almost unbearable, yet he bears it.  The crucifixion, the hanging of the impossible dead.

Saturday - Confusion, grief, and anger for those who loved Him.  He was laid in the tomb.  A guard was supposed to watch to make sure nobody took the dead body.

Sunday - Glorious Sunday.  Mary found an empty tomb.  Emotionally wrought she speaks to Him, thinking He was someone else.  "Rabbini!"  The shock of seeing the risen Lord.  She ran to tell others, she proclaimed, "He is alive!"

Something new was born that week.  Hope. Love. Peace. Mercy. Joy.  All intermingled, wrapped in sacrificial form.  A loving, sacrificial lamb, echoing a Jewish tradition of God saving you, passing over doors, overcame death.  He is a gift that overcame death.

He brings life at its fullest.  He is the Gift.  He is hope.  He is love.  He is peace.  He is mercy. He is joy.  He is.

Loved this! Has a child ever stumped you with a great question?

Another week has gone by.  I was tired this week, but I laughed a lot! Students are great in creating humor in the classroom.  The highlight this week was a freshmen who asked me, "When was your first kiss?"  This, of course, was his idea of making get-to-know questions a little more interesting! It make the whole class crack up and brings me to another important point on humor.

9) Humor Fosters Good Relations and Builds Community
Humor and community are intimately linked.  In an intuitive way, we get the feeling that jokes are enjoyed only in the company of friends.  We tell them at school, at work, and at home.  They demonstrate intimacy trust, and sense or togetherness among those those who tell jokes and listen to them.  Thus, one of the important elements of humor is the intimate connection it fosters among the members of a community.  Through jokes we also show our affection for the people who are most important in our lives.  By joking with people we are, in effect, taking care of them and simultaneously telling them that we love them.  And in inviting more people to share the same joke, our community expands and becomes more open to the presence of others.

Jokes can affirm a group's identity and, at the same time, make that community far richer.  Yet the important of humor extends farther.  Jokes and humor may also be viewed as evidence of the changes that occur in the community over time.  They point to a shared history, a common past that consists of a litany of dangers, trials, and occasional bouts of real suffering and genuine hardship.  Humor does more than "take the edge off" these rough times.  It literally reverses the sentiment of despair into its opposite: hope.  Humor performs the Janus task of looking backwards and forwards at the same time.  It recalls the past, and it sets it squarely before us.  Humor, the language of hope and joy, turns our eyes more resolutely toward the future.  By telling a joke, we affirm that our relationships are vitally healthy and ongoing, and thus open to change, to development, to continual deepening - in short, jokes open our lives and our communities to God.

10) Humor Opens Our Minds
 Laughing releases endorphins, which helps us to relax.  When we relax and feel less threatened, we more able to listen and to lear.  By relaxing listeners, laughters can help get a message across.  And, it may help us think more broadly or creatively. It may even give us spiritual insight like in the following story.

A pastor is giving spiritual direction to an older man who was practical, hardworking, and efficient.  He was getting older, and he was becoming frustrated.  As aging slowed him down, he felt less "productive."  A big part of the problem, both in prayer and daily life, was an overemphasis on "results."

The pastor asked the older man to pray using the image of Jesus as a young man between the ages of twelve and thirty, before he started his public ministry.  During those years, as far as is know, Jesus was not preaching or performing miracles.  He was simply working in a carpentry shop, plying his trade and living a simple life.

At one point, as the older man imagined watching Jesus working in his carpentry shop, he found himself saying to Jesus, "Why don't you start healing people now?  You're wasting all this time!  You're not very efficient!"

When he recounted this to the pastor, the pastor said, "You told Jesus that he wasn't productive?" The older man smiled and began to laugh.  That moment let him relax, pray in a more relaxed way and led him to see himself and others as a "human being" not a "human doing."

Laughter can be a sign of being freed from old ways of thinking, from being bound to old habits.  It was a sign of God's liberation.

As I continue this little series on humor, I am reminded of the beauty of laughter.  My three year old son went into peals of laughter as I was trying to put him to bed.  "Tuck, tuck," is a tradition that has been handed down over a few generations.  I usually can tuck the blankets in around him until he looks a little like a caterpillar in a cocoon.  Tonight he had the giggles.  Every time I touched him, he would get this wide smile on his face. "Mommy, you're tickling me." What fun it was to put him to bed tonight.

5) Humor shows courage
St. Lawrence showed his courage to his torturers during his martyrdom by saying, "I'm done on this side." It was both a pointed challenge to his executioners and a bold profession of faith.  Similarly, in the 16th century St. Thomas more, the onetime chancellor of England who had refused to accede to King Henry's requests to recognize the king's divorce, was sentenced to death. As he climbed the steps to his beheading, he said to his executioner, "See me safe up; for in my coming down I can shift for myself." This type of wit shows profound courage and conveys deep theological truth.  It says, "I do not fear death," and "I believe in God." It points to something beyond this world.  It is a kind of prophetic humor.

6) Humor deepens our relationship with God
One of the best ways of thinking about a relationship with God is a close, personal relationship or an intimate friendship.  In that light, our relationship to God - like any relationship - can use humor from time to time.  It's okay to be playful with God and accept the idea that God may want to be playful with us.
In Jewish tradition, there is the notion of a playful or loving God.  Many rabbis tell the story of God braiding Eve's hair in the garden, like someone who would help a bride. This is a charming and playful image of a loving God.

We have just entered the season of Advent, a season of hope, and I have just finished the church newsletter for next month.  There are a number of pieces on hope.  Hope for a new world, hope for a better life, hope in Christ.  Hope takes on many different forms in our world today. 

What did hope look like at the beginning? I keep thinking of Mary as the beginning of all this hope.  Her attitude and willingness to be a part of God's plan is very striking.  As I was contemplating Mary I came across a poet that highlights Mary's joy and hope in her son.  A bit of wonder that any parent can relate to.  Enjoy the poem!

Mary at the Nativity

The angel said there would be no end
to his kingdom. So for three hundred days
I carried rivers and cedars and mountains.
Stars spilled in my belly when he turned.

Now I can't stop touching his hands,
the pink pebbles of his knuckles,
the soft wrinkle of his flesh
between his forefinger and thumb.
I rub his fingernails as we drift 
in and out of sleep.  They are small
and smooth, like almond petals.
Forever, I will need nothing but these.

But all night, the visitors crowd 
around us.  I press his palms to my lips 
in silence.  They look down in anticipation,
as if they expect him
to spill coins from his hands
or raise a gold scepter
and turn swine into angels.

Isn't this wonder enough
that yesterday he was inside me, 
and how he nuzzles next to my heart?
That he wraps his hand around
my finger and holds on?

-Tania Runyan