They took palm branches and went out to meet Him, shouting, “Hosanna! “ “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel!”
John 12:13 NIV
In high school I was required to read the play, “Our Town,” and I really enjoyed it. I found it to be such a beautiful, bittersweet play. The play is about a woman, Emily; we see her as a young girl, then as a young woman, then we see her funeral. Emily has the option to go back and pick one day to relive if she chooses. The other dead around her tell her not to, but she chooses to relive a day anyway. Her remembered joy of the day she chooses quickly turns to anguish as she sees all the little things about the day that she wasn’t grateful for or happy about. She wants to yell at herself to enjoy everything, that everything is perfect, that life will go too quickly and she should be enjoying everything.
I’ve often thought of that play and asked myself what day of my life would I choose to relive if I had the choice? Would I pick a big, special day like my wedding day? If I were to choose my wedding day, I would get to see all my friends and family who had traveled from out of town for the big event … but I think I would end up choosing a more mundane day. One that was special, but not super special.
Last year we went camping and that Saturday was great. We had a breakfast of pancakes and bacon with French-pressed coffee that we cooked leisurely at our campsite. We worked on our hobbies before we decided to go to the pool where we alternately swam and read our books. After some time, we made our way back to our campsite and worked on our hobbies again for a while before building a fire and making dinner. After dinner, we cleaned up and relaxed around the campfire; we watched the stars and the flames until we decided to call it a night and go to sleep.
It was a simple day and it was special because we were away, but not all that exciting. We didn’t see anyone special; we didn’t even do anything we couldn’t do fairly easily from home. But it was a great day. It might be one I would consider reliving at the end of my life—but oh how bittersweet it would be knowing the end of the story and watching that day rather than living it now, presumably still near the beginning of my life’s story.
I wonder if that’s how Jesus felt as He rode into Jerusalem that day, all those years ago, hailed by the crowds waving palm branches. Unlike us, He knew the end of the story. He knew that in less than a week the crowd that cheered and waved palms before Him, the crowd that laid their coats on the ground and gave Him a young colt to ride on, would turn against Him. He knew that they would scream for His torturous death. He could feel the bitter sweetness of that moment in its entirety. He knew what the end of His story would be. He knows what the end of all of our stories will be. What a blessing that the end of our stories remain hidden from us. We don’t get the chance to relive days in our lives. We don’t get to change history; we don’t see the future, and we never know when the story of our life ends. But we know this: Jesus came so that when the days of our lives have been cut off and we have no more left, we can go to live with Him for forever.
Forever. Such a short word for such a great expanse of time—more than we can even fathom. Forever. Never ending. We get that chance with our few and precious days here on earth to choose where we want to spend our forever. If we choose Jesus, we will get to spend all of forever in a state that I imagine feels like our best days here on earth. And if we don’t choose Him? I think we will forever feel the pain and regret of all the missed opportunities, all the moments we wish we could go back and reclaim. I urge you to take a good look at the condition of your heart this Palm Sunday and ask yourself, if you were to die today, would you get to live your best days yet forever or would you forever feel the pain of the decision you didn’t make when you had the chance?
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.
1 Timothy 1:7
Last week I talked about spring, about new life being breathed into us, and about making time for the things that make you come alive. This week I want to talk about what happens when we don’t push past old comfort zones and stay stuck in our old limitations.
In keeping with the spring theme, think about what would happen if those little buds didn’t push past their old limitations for new growth? The tree wouldn’t grow. It may even start to die. What would that look like in terms of our faith if we did that?
The story of Jonah comes to mind when I think about this. God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh. But Nineveh was not a nice city and Jonah did not want to go. Instead of traveling towards Nineveh, he decided he would travel in the exact opposite direction. You most likely have heard the story—Jonah heads the opposite way, God sends a storm, Jonah tells the crew to throw him overboard to settle the storm, they finally do, the storm calms, and Jonah, upon landing in the water, is swallowed by a big fish where he rocks around inside the fish’s stomach for three days and three nights until the large fish vomits him up on shore. Finding himself alive, Jonah makes his way to Nineveh!
Now I have had things I haven’t wanted to do in this life—things that I have wanted to avoid and run away from. But, as my mother always said, it’s usually much better to just get it over with. I think Jonah would have agreed with my mother in hindsight. Pushing past old limitations and outside of our comfort zones are difficult endeavors. It gets uncomfortable—and I hate being uncomfortable. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received came early on in my career when I was told to “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” This is true in our faith as well.
Unfortunately it seems to be one of the laws of this world that growth only comes from being uncomfortable. The first time we boldly witness to a stranger—uncomfortable! The first time we offer to help a stranger—uncomfortable! But what do we feel if we don’t push back our comfort zone when God calls us? My guess is oftentimes we end up like Jonah; crammed into a small uncomfortable space, feeling like we are in the dark, and wishing we would have just done the thing we had worked so desperately to avoid.
I definitely still have times when I shy away from doing something that makes me uncomfortable. I’m sure you do too. My hope is that we can encourage one another in our faith, and ask God to help take some of the scariness out of the unknown and discomfort. Who knows what will come of it—maybe our small actions will one day impact a city, maybe even our city.
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God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to Him forever and ever! Amen.
1 Peter 4:10-11 NLT
It is the very beginning of spring here in Pennsylvania which means it could snow for another month, or it could be 80 degrees next week—we never know! Generally, when it gets to March-April we know it is safe to start expecting a few nice days here and there. We had one such day the other week. The sun came out and the last pockets of snow that had been lurking in the shadows melted away. There was that fresh, rich smell of damp earth. I don’t know why the earth (dirt) smells so good at the very beginning of spring but it does! It’s one of those little things in life that makes me so thankful to live in a place where we have four distinct seasons—surely the damp earth only smells this good after a long winter—at least that’s what I tell myself!
For me, each season we experience outside brings with it a change within me as well. I look outside in the spring and I see the new bursting through the old. The daffodils poke their heads through a covering of brown leaves; new buds push through the old branch ends creating and adding new growth to the trees. How freeing it must feel to those new little buds to push through old limits and be set free to grow in the sunlight of spring! Is there something we should be pushing ourselves to get through this season so we can grow?
God has created each of us to do and love something specific. Have you ever noticed that when we are doing “the thing” we are made for, that we come away feeling refreshed and even more energized than when we started? Have you experienced that? Do you know what “your thing” is? I assure you, even if you don’t feel like you have any particular talents, there is something. There is something that when you do it, time ceases to exist for you. It may not be anything fancy. For me, when I am engaged in a creative endeavor, I “lose track of time” and become totally absorbed in whatever I am working on (a hard thing for a tightly wound, Type A kind of person to do).
If you are feeling run down and worn out, it doesn’t matter how much you pare down and strip from your schedule, you will not feel refreshed until you spend time doing the thing you were made to do. You may have to scale back on other things so you have time do what you love, but adding the thing that you love is life-giving. It is rejuvenating. Don’t be afraid to try something new—stretch yourself—you may be surprised!
This spring I encourage you to pause, breathe in the fresh, damp smell of new life emerging and think about what God has created you to love and do that. Do it whole-heartedly and unto the Lord! Feel new life being breathed into you this spring.
P.S.
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See the sermon from our pastor that I mentioned here: Life or Death
The Lord says, “I was ready to respond, but no one asked for help. I was ready to be found, but no one was looking for me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am!’ to a nation that did not call on my name.”
Isaiah 65:1 NLT
There’s that old joke about the elderly woman who is in the hospital with very poor health. It seems it may be her time to go, so her pastor stops by to visit with her, possibly for the last time. Upon arriving the pastor says, “Mrs. Jones, I’d really like to talk to you about the hereafter.”
Mrs. Jones replies, “Oh good, I’ve been wanting to talk to someone about that!”
“You have?”, the Pastor asks.
“Oh yes. I keep walking into rooms and thinking, `Now what was I here after?’”
I can certainly relate with Mrs. Jones, even at my relatively young age! In fact, just today I went downstairs to the basement to grab something that should have been on my desk in a white plastic bag. I didn’t see it right off, but I saw a few other things that I had been meaning to bring upstairs so I took them upstairs instead. Upon returning upstairs, I looked around for the white plastic bag but I still couldn’t find it, so I went back downstairs. When I went back downstairs I looked again, I didn’t see it, looked a few other places and still couldn’t find it. Finally turned around to give the first area where I expected it to be a good hard look and then I saw it! It had been placed about a foot away from where I thought it was and that is why I it hadn’t seen it! I should also mention that I did briefly look for this plastic bag the day before too, albeit half-heartedly, but hadn’t seen it that time either.
All this to say, if it is this easy for us to miss things we know are in plain sight, how easy is it for us to overlook God when we are not actively trying to seek Him? In Isaiah 65:1 the Lord says, “I was ready to respond, but no one asked for help. I was ready to be found, but no one was looking for me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am!’ To a nation that did not call on my name.” (Isaiah 65:1 NLT) Ouch! Have we done that too? Or should I say, how many times have we done that ?
So many times we are trying to make a hard decision, seeking guidance in a tough situation and what do we do? We open our Bibles randomly hoping to find a magic verse before muttering a quick prayer. And then we wait—for five whole minutes—and then we jump up to go talk to our spouse, friend, or other family member to ask what they think God’s will is.
But God isn’t Santa waiting for our requests. And He isn’t a gumball machine waiting to spit out the exact thing we want as soon as we ask. Sometimes He gives us what we ask for just after we ask; other times He allows us to wait. And there are those times He does not give us what we want. Knowing God and His will is a relationship we have to invest in. Now granted, there are times when He will answer our prayers quickly, and there are times when He may seem to not much care about our requests because his silence can seem so definite. But what He wants the most is for us to invest in a relationship with Him; that we seek Him—so when we need Him, we will know that He has been with us the whole time.
“What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, ‘Stop, you’re doing it wrong!’ Does the pot exclaim, ‘How clumsy can you be?’”
Isaiah 45:9
I have mentioned before that one of my hobbies is making glass beads. (See the post, The Refining Fire.) I have made more than my fair share of beads that have not turned out the way I wanted them to—at all! And, while I have had many moments where I shook my head at the outcome of my efforts, I have never had a bead tell me that it did not like the way I made it! But that is what we do with God, isn’t it?
There are many things in this life that I wish I could do better. There are many things I wish I could do even a little bit! I wish I had some musical ability; I wish I was quicker at math; I wish I liked technology and was better with it than I am. Alas, no one asked for my opinion when I was being created in my mother’s womb. I have a whole list of things I would have swapped out and added if it had been left up to me. But it wasn’t.
This verse also makes me think about when people ask why a good God would let such terrible things happen in this world. That’s not really how He made things at the beginning. The terrible things were our fault—not His. Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden enjoying a blissful life unlike anything we’ve ever seen. They were in harmony with nature, with each other, and with God. Then, they went and ruined everything. The Serpent was in the Garden and he questioned Eve, tempted her, and got her to doubt God for just long enough for her to take a bite of the forbidden fruit. Adam was there, but apparently he did nothing to stop her. All at once, evil was introduced into the world. And the Garden was no longer a place of bliss.
We do not know how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden before this happened. Presumably it was a while, but not so very long. Do any of us think we possess any more will power than Adam and Eve? We have the benefit of hindsight, similar to telling the character not to open the door that we know the villain is lurking behind. We know what they were introducing to the world by their initial sin. However, Adam and Eve did not and could not, fully grasp what their sin would do not just to them but to all of humanity. Conversely, we cannot imagine the communion they had with God prior to the fall.
Yet we think we know better. We think that a good God should not allow things like this to happen. But why do we think we could design a better world when we were the ones who messed it up the first time? Who are we to tell the creator that we don’t like the way He created us? Who are we to question and complain about the abilities we wish we had? Who are we to say the He designed the world, His creation, all wrong?
Perhaps we spend too much time asking why we were made in such a way rather than seeking how we can use the way we were made to serve Him. Perhaps we should ask Him how he wants us to use our specific talents and abilities to convey his love; how He wants us to respond to all the hurting souls in the world, and how we should demonstrate our faith and trust in Him. How can we show Him that we believe He knows what He is doing and that He has everything under control? Most importantly we need to seek how can we be more like Him.
But You, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Psalms 86:15
Have you ever told a lie, even just a little one? What about a big one? Have you gotten caught in the lie, been humiliated when everything came to light, and then years later done exactly the same thing again? That is what Abraham did.
Abraham is traveling with his wife Sara through Egypt when Sara catches Pharaoh’s eye. Abraham tells Sara that, if questioned, she should say that she is Abraham’s sister. Now this is partially true; they had the same father, but they definitely were married. Pharaoh, upon hearing that Sara is Abraham’s sister, takes her as his wife. Plagues visit Egypt and it is revealed to Pharaoh that Sara is in fact Abraham’s wife. Pharaoh immediately calls Abraham and tells him to take Sara, pack up his belongings, and get out of Egypt!
Years later a similar thing happens. Abraham and Sara are traveling through Gerar when King Abimelech sees Sara. Abraham tells Sara to repeat the lie that worked out so well for them in Egypt—and Sara does this! This time, Abraham was afraid that because Sara was so beautiful that the king would kill him to take Sara. But again, we saw this play out once already. Things are not going well for King Abimelech. God comes to the king in a dream and tells him to release Sara back to Abraham because Sara is Abraham’s wife. Abimelech listens to God and Sara and Abraham once again pack up and leave.
Now when I read this I say what? How does this happen because:
Why would Abraham repeat the same lie when it didn’t go well the first time, and
Why would Sara go along with it?
Personally, I can understand Abraham fearing for his life and coming up with the plan the first time but as Sara, I really don’t know that I would go along with it the second time—especially when this would mean being taken away from her household and living in a strange culture in the King’s palace. (Well, living in the palace part doesn’t sound so bad…)
Though this is a very blatant example of a family making the same bad decision twice, we see repeated examples of people making terrible choices and decisions throughout the Bible. The Israelites mess up time and time again, and repeatedly have to be brought back from their worship of false gods—even after they had witnessed the miracle of God parting the Red Sea. Then there is Peter who denied Christ not once, not twice, but three times!
We read about these events but do we really absorb them? Do we truly grasp what an all-loving, patient God we serve? We mess up in our lives; we beat ourselves up and think what horrible people and Christians we are, forgetting that we are merely humans living in a fallen world. But, He is abundantly merciful, full of grace, patient and kind. We should strive to serve God with all of hearts, souls and minds as the Bible commands. We aren’t perfect and that is not news to God. While we might be surprised at our frail humanity, God isn’t. The good thing is He never asks us to be perfect. He asks us to love Him and through doing so He will make us more like Him.
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