Hebrews 2:9  But we see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

Last night at our Maundy Thursday service we sang one of my favorite communion songs, “Behold the Lamb.” Take a few minutes to listen and see, with the eyes of your heart; share in the Bread of Life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=481xyHUrwQA

Last night we read a portion of Psalm 78. Verses 19-20 and 24-25 were poignant for Karis and me through the many years of our “wilderness,” trying to figure out how to nourish a body with a malfunctioning, non-functioning or, from November 2004 until January 2006, completely absent intestine:

Can God set a table in the wilderness?

True, he struck the rock, the waters gushed out, and the gullies overflowed;

But is he able to give bread or to provide meat for his people?

. . . He rained down manna upon them to eat and gave them grain from heaven.

So mortals ate the bread of angels; he provided for them food enough.

What is your wilderness? What is your hunger? Take it, as I will, to the cross today. See Jesus, tasting death so that we can drink life. “He drained death’s cup that all may enter in to receive the life of God. So we share in this Bread of Life, and we drink of his sacrifice, as a sign of our bonds of grace around the table of the King” (verse 2 of “Behold the Lamb”).

Taking a Holy Week break from the Stones of Remembrance.

John 2:18-22 The Jewish leaders then said to him, “What sign have you to show us for doing this?” [Chasing the merchants out of the temple].  Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  The Jewish leaders then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the Scriptures and the word which Jesus had spoken.

Like me, you probably watched in horror yesterday as flames engulfed the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral. What a tragic, dramatic, incomprehensible introduction to Holy Week.

The ashes of Notre Dame Cathedral heartrendingly illustrate for us John’s record of Jesus’ words comparing his own body to the temple in Jerusalem. How ludicrous to imagine rebuilding the Cathedral in three days! Jesus’ boldness in comparing his body to Herod’s temple tells us that his resurrection is just as impossible.

His accusers later used their own version of these words to condemn Jesus before the Jewish high council and to mock him on the cross (Matthew 26:60-61, 27:40). They had no idea Who they were mocking; no understanding that the fullness of God actually indwelt this broken, beaten body they had destroyed. That death could not hold the Author of Life. That there was at work a deeper magic from before the dawn of time, to borrow from C. S. Lewis.

All four of the Gospel writers slow down the narrative when relating Jesus’s last days, and that is exactly what we are called to this week: to slow down our own frenetic lives to walk with Jesus to the cross, through the emptiness of Saturday, and then to allow the glory of Easter morning to astonish us once more. It occurs to me today that I did exactly the same thing in Karis, All I See Is Grace, paying extra attention to the details of Karis’s last days with us. And I can well imagine that for everyone who visited or worked in the Notre Dame Cathedral last week, that privilege has taken on entirely new dimensions. I can imagine each one thinking and saying, “I was there . . . I didn’t know . . . !”

This week is the time we slow down long enough to remember. To walk with Jesus. To open ourselves to new comprehension of what it all means. To identify with those who love him, around the world and through all time. To say with Karis, “All I see is grace.”

“What’s with the rocks?”

“Do you have a few minutes? Pick a rock and I’ll tell you a story.” 

Rock #5 green: Miracles

There was a time in my life when I could easily think about the future: imagine possibilities, make plans, dream dreams . . .

But when I found myself in survival mode not just for days or weeks, but for months that stretch into years, I found I couldn’t do that. My husband Dave would say things on the phone or by email like, “I have these goals for the next five years,” or “Next year let’s” do such and such, and I would stare blankly, as if he was speaking a foreign language. It was all I could do to imagine getting through that day. It was hard even to imagine tomorrow.

In the middle of life and death crises, which came around all too unpredictably and too often, my world narrowed down even further, to getting through this hour, or these minutes. For these minutes, Karis is still alive. God hasn’t taken her yet.

To help you understand this, let me describe a not-unusual day. Karis wakes up smiley and perky, describing to me all that she wants to do today: the friends she wants to call or visit, that new coffee shop she’s been longing to try, the birthday gift for a child in the hospital she wants to finish making, the passage from the Qur’an she wants to study and translate and compare with Scripture before she next sees her Arabic-speaking friend, what she wants to make for dinner and the shopping list it has generated . . .

By lunchtime all we’ve accomplished is getting her through her physical therapy routine, her bath, her bandage changes, her morning pills and IVs, and moved her from her bedroom to the living room couch, where she needs to rest after all the exertion of the morning. She talks to a friend on the phone, and I hear them making plans that I can’t imagine will ever take place.

Then she falls asleep, and over the next couple of hours I see her skin change from pale to flushed and damp. A hand on her forehead confirms she’s spiking a fever, but I need to measure it with a thermometer before I call her transplant coordinator. And I know what Cindy will say: bring her in; I’ll set up the admission.

On the way to the hospital I get a call from Dr. Costa: “Take Karis directly to the ICU.” “Why?” “Just do it.”

How does this man know?? By the time we reach the hospital Karis is struggling to breathe. There is already a transporter waiting for us at the emergency room, but triage takes her blood pressure: 60 over 40. They rush her away, and I follow to the ICU waiting room more slowly, knowing I will have a long wait while they stabilize her. I sit and pray. I thank God for Dr. Costa’s intuition. I thank God for nurses and doctors who know Karis well and love her. I know she’s in the best possible hands, not just medical hands, but God’s hands.

I’m not surprised when the ICU doctor emerges to tell me Karis is sedated and on a ventilator. I can go in and “see” her for a few minutes. It seems to be pneumonia, but there is suspicion of a central line infection as well. They’ve used pressors to stabilize her blood pressure, but she does seem to be septic. They’ll cover her with broad-spectrum antibiotics until they know what they’re actually treating.

I go in to “see” Karis long enough to wipe her sweaty forehead and pray for her and thank her nurses for their care. Then they need me out of the way, so I return to the waiting room to ponder whether I should call my husband in the midst of ministry in Brazil. I settle on an email, to him and to my other children. I decide to wait on posting on Karis’s prayer blog until I have something more positive to say.

I suddenly remember the friends who planned to come see Karis at home this evening, and call them to cancel. Before long my phone starts ringing: my other kids, friends who had already heard through the grapevine . . . My son, “Mom, I’ll get there as soon as I can, but you ought to phone Dad.”

The ICU nurse calls me in to go through Karis’s current medication list, which doesn’t completely match what’s in her computer. Dr. Costa comes by and I ask him, “How did you know?” “It was just a feeling,” he says, “because she spiked such a high fever so quickly.” “What are you thinking?” I ask him. “It’s too soon to tell, but I am very concerned—there’s too much going on all at once.” “She was perfectly fine this morning.” “I know—I saw her vital signs. Why don’t you go get something to eat, and then check back in. We’ll page you if we need you.”

I can’t tell you how many times this type of scenario repeated itself: going from fine to critically ill within hours. This was life with profound immunosuppression, necessary because of the mismatch between Karis’s graft and the two other immune systems present in her body. One step forward; two steps back. Stable to scary with no warning. It happened often enough that I became hypervigilant, like a child in an unpredictably abusive family. How could I make plans, or think concretely about the future?

One day at a time. One hour at a time. Holding on to God’s presence and his promises through the scary times and the more stable times. Clinging to Scriptures like Lamentations 3:20-27, which became my anchor:

I will never forget this awful time . . . yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord. And it is good for people to submit at an early age to the yoke of his discipline.”

The discipline for me was this: to trust God for this day, this hour, and leave tomorrow with him. I thought a lot about the Israelites in the desert, dependent on God’s manna each morning. God gave them just enough for one day. If they gathered more than that, in anxiety over whether there would be provision for tomorrow, the extra would spoil.

God gave me just enough faith for one day, sometimes one hour at a time. It’s easy to understand the concept, but for me, it was hard to live into. I wanted more. I wanted to gather manna for tomorrow, to have margin, to have some sense of control over what might happen next. But that simply didn’t work. I had to walk and breathe and learn to relax into his provision for today, for now. His mercies new every morning.

After months and years of doing this, like any discipline, it becomes a habit—a habit I’ve found hard to break. It is easier now for me to think about and plan for the future, like making a plan for my book trips this fall. But I hold everything very loosely. God may have something different in mind; something I’m not able to see right now. Whether things run smoothly or there are unhappy surprises, I know I am dependent on my Father for his provision of what I need—one day at a time.

Psalm 31:22 In panic I cried out . . . But you heard my cry for mercy and answered my call for help.

In my early marriage I sold Fuller Brush products door to door. One Sunday I put the week’s checks from my customers on the top of the car as we were putting things inside to go to church. I forgot to take them from the top of the car – some $1000 back in 1978 when that meant a great deal. Arriving at church, I went into a panic. I got a ticket driving home as fast as I could, but found no checks anywhere.

A lady had a dream about finding signed checks all over the place. She asked herself if that were to happen, what she would do. And then as she took her morning walk, she saw a piece of paper fluttering in a bush. Intrigued, she went over and found a signed check… and then another… and another. She looked up our name and address and showed up at our apartment later that day with some twenty signed checks. Whewee!

We lose things. All kinds of things! We sometimes think we’re losing our minds. BUT GOD…! 🙂

Psalm 121:5 God himself watches over you.

God cares. Psalm 121 starts out “I lift my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from?” The Psalmist is clearly in trouble. He’s looking for help, somewhat desperately. In the remaining seven verses of the Psalm, the phrase “he who watches over you” or a similar phrase are repeated five times! Sometimes we may feel like we have to look for help or look for God. Little do we know that he’s looking much more than we are! Looking out for us!

Last week I badly wanted something for my ministry. It was taken away from me. Something else was offered. While I really wasn’t happy with what was offered, by the end of the week I realized that what was offered was a far better fit for my calling than what I had so much wanted.

I wanted one thing, BUT GOD… God watched over me and kept me from what I wanted because He knew that what I really needed was something else entirely. Thank You, God!

Ezra 5:3-5 [Governor] Tattenai soon arrived in Jerusalem and asked, “Who gave you permission to rebuild this Temple? . . . But because God was watching over them, the Jews were not prevented from building.

The first few chapters of Ezra describe Zerubbabel and Jeshua’s challenges and successes as they led the small remnant of Jews in Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple that had been destroyed seventy years before. We wouldn’t know this story if Ezra hadn’t come along fifty-some years later and written it down. We would have missed an important link in the chain of God’s relationship with his people.

Reading Ezra has encouraged me these days in my own efforts to record what I know from Karis’s journals and have experienced myself of God watching over our family even through our toughest times. Here’s an example, a very simple one but it had great impact for me:

I was keeping vigil at Karis’s bedside during a time when, because of bleeding and seizures caused by overdose of one of her medications, she wasn’t mentally occupying the same reality the rest of us were in touch with. I was hungry, but even more exhausted than hungry. The idea of walking down to the hospital cafeteria and standing in line and having to choose what to eat all seemed like too much effort.

I was thinking about this, not even actually verbalizing it to the Lord, when there was a knock on the door and a nurse walked in with a tray of food. “This patient was already discharged and the food will just be thrown away. I thought maybe . . .?”

The nurse was actually embarrassed about offering this to me, as if I might be offended. But she was even more discomfited by the tears that sprang to my eyes. She said, “Don’t tell anyone. I’m not actually supposed to do this.”

Several more times during that hospitalization when that nurse was on duty, trays of food “mysteriously” appeared in Karis’s room that Karis, of course, couldn’t eat. (But please don’t tell anyone.)

God was watching over me in such a precious, personal way. And I have no doubt he is watching over you too. So here’s a little challenge for you:

Between now and Thanksgiving, write down a story about God caring for you. And on Thanksgiving Day, share that story with someone.

If you like, you can send your story to me for this blog. I would love to share a dozen stories of God watching over us.

Zechariah 8:11-13 [This is what the Lord says after listing challenges facing his people.] “But now I am planting seeds of peace and prosperity among you. . . . I will rescue you and make you both a symbol and a source of blessing. So don’t be afraid. Be strong and get on with rebuilding the Temple.”

Here is another time God is saying “Don’t be afraid.” Zechariah was a contemporary of Haggai (last post). Clearly this was a message people of that time needed to hear as they faced both internal and external opposition to their work of rebuilding the Temple.

And I think it’s a message we need, as we face opposition to rebuilding the temple of the Lord, the church (see 1 Corinthians 3:16). What are the obstacles you face today? Are they more internal (your own personal struggles to live in a godly and fruitful way) or external (attempts by others, consciously or unconsciously, to sabotage your work)? What are your particular vulnerabilities? Can you hear God say to you today, “Don’t be afraid. I get it—I see what you’re facing. But don’t worry. I’ve got this!”?

I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than to be both a symbol and a source of blessing. This is what I long for with the Karis story: to encourage others. So I find it interesting to note what God says he will do: 1) plant seeds of peace and prosperity among us, 2) rescue us, and 3) make us both a symbol and source of blessing. That’s his part. Our part is 1) don’t be afraid, 2) be strong, and 3) get on with rebuilding the temple.

In every case, though, I find myself dependent on the Lord to be able to do “my” part. I can only not be afraid because God has promised to walk with me, even through the valley of the shadow of death. Even through remembering the tough times.  I can only be strong because his joy is my strength. I can only get on with the work he has given me because of his gifting and blessing. It’s really all about him!

Haggai 2:3-5 Does anyone remember this Temple in its former splendor?  . . . This new Temple must seem like nothing at all! But now the Lord says: Be strong . . . and now get to work, for I am with you . . . My Spirit remains among you, just as I promised . . . So do not be afraid.

When Karis emerged from sixty days of induced coma in January, 2005 her body, a temple of the Lord (1 Corinthians 6:19), had been all but destroyed. She had no intestine; instead, she had two huge drainage tubes emerging from her abdomen that she had to carry around with her for a year. She was so weak she couldn’t even lift a finger to push the nurse call button. She had to rebuild her foundations, not just physically but academically, emotionally, spiritually. It seemed an impossibly long road back to what would never be “normal” again.

In Karis’s own words, once she was able to start writing again:

Mar 14, 2005 I cried a lot today. I cried for the full, beautiful life I once knew.

Mar 27, 2005 If I cried often in those days after my comas it was because I wanted desperately to feel alive again, to be myself again. But my soul had been buried so deep to survive the comas it wouldn’t come back to me quickly. Like Little Bo Peep’s sheep, it would emerge eventually—but on its own time. Meanwhile, I was distant from myself. Various times I attempted the Bible or Catherine of Sienna, Rumi, Hafiz, church bulletins; but my attention span was nil and prayer eluded me.

I write this in the past tense as a gesture of hope.

Mar 28, 2005 For Holy Week they held various celebrations at Ascension. One of them was the stripping of the cross. My own stripping is perhaps over. I’ve lost my foot and my hair and dozens of friendships, my ability to dance and to sing and to eat and to yell. Even my face is a different shape and I no longer read. So have I changed, in essence and purpose?

Mar 30, 2005 1 Corinthians 1:8—A promise I must learn to stand on. [She writes the verse three times.] “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”

“He will keep you strong.” The Jews rebuilding the Temple in Haggai’s day faced intense opposition. Karis’s efforts to rebuild her body were also complicated by opposition: intensely painful pancreatitis, and then liver failure. By August, liver was added to the list for a second transplant, now five organs. Had God’s Spirit not been with her, encouraging her not to be afraid, she might have despaired. We both might have despaired.

August 25, 2005 marked one year since Karis’s first transplant. In that year she spent 249 days in the hospital, 92 of those in the ICU. I wrote on her blog:

“But what we like to focus on is God’s incredible grace to us through all the ups and downs of the last year. We have seen God’s love and kindness dramatically revealed through the Body of Christ. . .

What happens next? We don’t know.  The ONLY way to walk this journey is one day—sometimes, one hour or one minute—at a time, in absolute dependence on God’s daily-renewed mercies. That hasn’t changed, just because we know better than we did a year ago what scary kinds of things can happen post-transplant.”

Today (thirteen years later!), I am less aware of my need to depend on God’s strength and Presence with me as I was every day of 2005. But it is no less true. Thank you, Lord, that you are still saying, “Do not be afraid.”

Jeremiah 31:16-17 [Crying is heard.] But now this is what the Lord says: “Do not weep any longer, for I will reward you,” says the Lord . . . “There is hope for your future,” says the Lord.

I had several adventures yesterday as I cared for my grandson Caleb. At ten months, he is into everything. He managed to pull over on himself a gallon of water, just room temperature but still a surprise.

Once I changed Caleb’s clothes, I turned to cleaning up the water running all over my kitchen floor. I tried to interest Caleb in his toys in the next room, but within about thirty seconds, wanting to be where I was, he had crawled back into the water.

I couldn’t think of anything to do except put the baby in his playpen in my bedroom. Despite the toys I gave him to play with, he was outraged. It was clearly not nap time, the only reason I usually use the pack n play. Separated and unable to see me, he screamed the entire time I was mopping the kitchen floor.

As I dried things out, I had time to reflect that Caleb probably felt I had treated him unjustly; that I was punishing him. Hmm. How often do I feel like circumstances I don’t understand are some kind of injustice or punishment? And how often is God compelled to restrain me in some fashion while he cleans up a mess I’ve made?

Caleb had no way to understand that his confinement would be very brief. For the time he was there, he had no concept of hope for his future. The only way to console him was to take him out of the playpen, cuddle him close and speak reassuringly to him. He doubtless understood few of my words, just like I don’t always understand what God is saying to me. But his underlying trust in me, built over many hours of companionship since he was born, soon soothed his hurt feelings.

Perhaps one day I’ll tell Caleb this story, in a conversation about injustice and the hope we can have for our future because God’s love for us continues rock solid, even when we can’t understand our circumstances!

A Caleb selfie from yesterday. I was trying to take his picture, but he crawled over and pushed the button himself. I still don’t know how he switched it to selfie mode, because I don’t know how to do that myself yet on my new phone!