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A mouthful of fruit imagery, by Andrew Hochstedler, visiting Krakow, Poland

But Jesus’s words bear fruit

John 15:5-8 I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing . . . But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.

[Debbie] I’m posting today from Oregon, where our mission team is meeting for a few days as we do twice a year. I want to share with you part of a letter from our Syriac scholar/Franciscan friar friend Andrew who visited Krakow a few days ago. Andrew wrote:

I’m attaching an image of a 15th-century fresco of the “Mystical Winepress” from the friary cloister, one of the few pieces of early art that was not destroyed in a fire that gutted the church in the mid-19th century. 

The image shows the suffering Christ carrying his cross, except that the cross is the winepress and he is pressing himself. His own blood – the juice from the grapes – drips down into the chalice of the mass in the picture below. Above is God the Father, beside Christ is the Virgin Mary. 

It’s a stark image, as medieval paintings often are. But it also taps into the fact that the message of the cross is about real human suffering.

The Mystical Winepress, photo by Andrew Hochstedler

Am I called to be like Christ, to suffer? We all suffer at some point. It’s part of our human experience, each in different ways. There is one level at which my own sufferings can be united to Christ’s, I can come closer to him in love through my sufferings, as they allow me to accompany Christ and know him in his sufferings (Phil 3:10). I don’t have much practice with this, but I understand it to work if/when we choose to give the sufferings to him, to make them into gift rather than just meaningless pain. This a path that Francis of Assisi followed, very literally, meeting Christ even in “Sister Death.”

At another level, Christ does not need me to suffer like him. His sacrifice is enough. As one of the sisters from St. Faustina Kowalska’s community, the Congregation of our Lady of Mercy, told us during our visit last Thursday, they don’t go out seeking suffering for its own sake. However, I am called to be like the virgin Mary, doing what I can to bring Christ into the world, listening for His voice, saying “yes” to him, making each action a moment of gift so that Christ can enter my sterile life and make it fruitful, bringing love to me and others.

Jacob of Sarug, an early Syriac Christian writer, connects Mary to Christ’s winemaking, recognizing her as the vine on which Christ, the cluster of grapes, grew. In Syriac, by the way, the word for “vine” used in early versions of John 15 can also mean “vineyard”… so in that image Christ can be the vineyard and we can all be vines and/or workers in the “Christ vineyard.” Syriac Church Fathers enjoy playing with imagery that has multiple levels of meaning.

Addressing Mary, Jacob of Sarug says (in Homily on the Nativity 1),

O virginal vine, who although not pruned, gave a cluster [Christ],

behold, by whose wine creation, which was mourning, rejoices!

I love these two lines because they tie so much imagery together: (1) Mary’s virgin birth-giving, (2) Christ’s death on the cross (3) Christ’s blood which becomes Eucharistic, (4) Wine that brings rejoicing, (5) Christ as a new fruit in contrast with the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which brought death and sorrow.

It’s a mouthful of fruit imagery to meditate on!

Love,

Your brother Andrew

Irish rainbows

But God offers a new covenant

Genesis 8:21-22, 9:16 The Lord said to himself, “I will never again destroy all living things. As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night. …When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between myself and every living creature on earth.”

Matthew 26:27-28 Jesus took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, “Each of you drink from it, for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many.”

2 Timothy 4:6-7 As for me, my life has already been poured out as a drink offering to God. The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful.

It rained all or part of every day we were in Ireland. We saw more rainbows in a week than we usually see in a year. And yes, there was treasure at the end of the rainbows. Our “pot of gold” was the wonderful people we met, who shared part of their lives with us. We learned some of their hopes and aspirations—what rainbows symbolize in the Emerald Isle.

As we sat high on Bray Head, County Wicklow, beneath a cross overlooking Dublin Bay, we saw a rainbow begin to form and arc, its colors gradually strengthening. Can you see the developing rainbow in this far-away photo?

But seeing this rainbow on our last day in Ireland, sitting at the foot of a cross, reminded me not only of God’s covenant with Noah, but of the covenant Jesus inaugurated with his disciples the night he was arrested, sharing with them wine which represented the pouring out of his blood for sanctification—remission—forgiveness—cleansing—of their sin, and ours.

In Old Testament worship, two types of liquid offering used in Old Testament worship, familiar to Jesus’s disciples and Paul and Timothy. A blood offering had the power to sanctify (Leviticus 8:15). Paul compared his life to a drink offering, an “extra”—a personal expression of devotion and gratitude (Numbers 28:7).

Jesus’s blood sacrifice carried the weight of covenant. The drink offering Paul invoked communicated how precious that covenant was to him, compelling him to give up everything he had once valued and pursued, his old “pot of gold”: I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. … I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death (Philippians 3:7-8, 10).

So, what do I hope for and aspire to? What’s my pot of gold? At the end of my life, what will I think mattered?

Ever since that beautiful morning on Bray Head, the questions have lingered.

Court dress

But the Son of God has come! April 10, 2023

1 John 5:19-20 The world around us is under the control of the evil one. And the Son of God has come, and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. … He is eternal life.

My heart is so full of the blessing of yesterday–I want to share a few of many special moments with you. Dave and I love attending the sunrise service at 6:00 a.m. The service begins in total darkness as we review God’s work leading up to this day. We are each handed a candle, and the first half of the service is conducted by candlelight.

Before I go on, a bit of context:

On Thursday evening, at the end of the footwashing service, the altar had been stripped of every decoration as the light gradually lowers until the pastor ends with the reading by candlelight of Luke 22:39-53. Verse 53 ends with, “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” As he says “the power of darkness,” the pastor blows out his candle. At the same instant, all remaining light in the sanctuary is extinguished. We sit in silence in the darkness, and when we’re ready, leave in the same way.

On Friday, from noon until 3:00, in various ways, including art works from people in the congregation, we shared in Jesus’s suffering on the cross, suffering for each of us. We are invited to write our sins and burdens and walk forward to leave our folded papers in a basket at the foot of the rough wooden cross, bearing a crown of thorns, at the front of the church. At the end of the service, these are taken outside and burned, to symbolize Christ bearing them for us.

On Easter morning, as we enter the dark sanctuary, we have in our minds the stripped altar and the cross. But at a certain moment in the service, the lights and the choir explode, and we see the sanctuary full of flowers. Madly ringing bells we have brought from home for this moment, the congregation joins the choir in wholehearted praise.

This year, when the lights came on, we also saw an amazing mosaic at the front of the church. This also requires a bit of context, going back to Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22. We were invited to bring to that service a piece of pottery from home, which we placed in a big metal tub and smashed with hammers at the end of the service, to illustrate our brokenness.

An artist, with the help of anyone from the church who wished to participate, took those broken pieces and created beauty from them. People crowded around after the service to admire it and to identify pieces from their own broken cup or bowl or pitcher. Many of us were in tears at this visual, visceral symbol of God’s transformation and healing offered us through Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. The photo I managed to capture:

The mosaic reminded me of the last chapter of Suffering and the Heart of God. Diane Langberg waxes poetic as she describes Jesus on the cross, and then restored to life, healing our brokenness. Here’s part of what she says:

The cross is a place of death and evil; decay and wrath. It is a pace of darkness, thirst, isolation, rejection, abandonment, and bondage. It is the absence of God and all that is good. It is hell itself.

And whom do we see there? The Lily of the Valley, the Rose of Sharon. We see the fairest of ten thousand, the beauty of God incarnate. We see purity, holiness, infinite love, compassion, and eternal glory. …

Death and evil seemed to have won. But God had so much more up his sleeve:

What happened that third day? Decay was transformed into glory. Death was swallowed up by life. Evil was transfigured into holiness, and the wrath of men into praise. Darkness was changed to light, and hell defeated by heaven. Thirst is transformed into living water and brokenness into the bread of life. Alienation led to restored relationship and bondage led to freedom.

If garbage can be transformed into beauty on such a scale as this, then surely it can happen in my small life and in the lives of others. … The cross, a thing of beauty? Yes, for it is at the cross that we behold all of the beauties of Christ in perfection. All of his love is drawn out there. All of his character expressed. The wounds of Jesus are far more fair than all the splendor of this world. …

Children of God in a world controlled by the Evil One. I fear the odds are against us. Our wits are too slow, our understanding finite and our strength too frail. But, glorious but, “the Son of God has come … to transform garbage into beauty, first in our lives and then in those we serve. … So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18). And what is it that is unseen? The Lord of Glory, the Lord of all Beauty, who wears the appearance of a slain Lamb as his court dress. …

May we count Him alone as worthy and all else as rubbish. May we desire one thing—to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek his beautiful face. And then may the beauty of our Lord be upon us. May he establish the work of our lives.

I invite you to enjoy our choir’s Easter anthem, called “Glad of Heart,” written in 1568, here (start at 1:39:50) Of course, you can watch any of the rest of the live stream you wish–or either of the other two services. The worship during communion begins at 1:59:23. Here is the text:

  1. Now glad of heart be everyone! The fight is fought, the battle won, the Christ is set upon his throne, alleluia, alleluia!
  2. Who on the wood was crucified, who rose again, as at this tide, in glory to his Father’s side, alleluia, allelluia!
  3. Who baffled death and harrowed hell and led the souls that loved him well, all in the light of lights to dwell: alleluia, alleluia!
  4. To him we lift our heart and voice and in his paradise rejoice with harp and pipe and happy noise. Sing alleluia, alleluia!
  5. Then rise all Christian folk with me and carol forth the One in Three that was, and is, and is to be, alleluia, alleluia!

Though this has become a long post, I want to share one more thing, related to verse 4 of this anthem. Several weeks ago I started practicing with my grandchildren a simple piece of music (“Allelu, allelu, allelu, alleluia, Praise ye the Lord) to share with their parents at our Easter brunch, accompanied by a variety of simple instruments. The adults at the table each had an instrument as well, to join in the song after the children “taught” it to them. “Happy noise” indeed! It was such fun that we sang and “played” other songs as well, ending, at Talita’s request, with “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” Since the morning sermon had referenced Jesus as the Morning Star, each of us to reflect his glory, this seemed oddly appropriate!

To despair–and back

But the King is the Lamb

John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

Ephesians 4:10 And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself.

Since I sat down to write, the silhouette of a giant blue spruce has slowly emerged against the lightening sky through my kitchen window. I knew the tree was there, but I couldn’t see it until light eased in around it. Over the last few minutes, though I still don’t see color, details of contour and depth are becoming clearer.

This day, Saturday, Sabbath day for Jesus’s mother Mary and the others who gathered around his cross, was a day of darkness and grief, of shock and despair, a day of blind belief that the Light of their lives had been cruelly extinguished. If you’ve lost someone close to you, you have the shadow of understanding of what they might have been experiencing.

Did any of them, that Saturday, remember Jesus telling them he would rise again on the third day? Matthew and Luke record Jesus telling them repeatedly this would be the case. From their initial disbelief the next day, it seems they did not remember. They apparently didn’t have even this amount of light shining into their darkness, increasingly illuminating the true nature of His sacrifice, as I can now see individual branches of the spruce.

John the Evangelist tells us his xará John the Baptist (Brazilians affectionately call a person with the same name or birthday their xará) “was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light,” (v. 8), the true light (v. 9), who reveals God the Father to us (v. 18). By the time the Evangelist cites John the Baptist as recognizing Jesus as the Lamb of God, the Chosen One (v. 34), he has already described Jesus as the eternal Word, the world-Creator, the Life-giver, the unextinguishable Light, the status- and family-sharer (v. 12), the enabler of new beginnings (v. 13), the ultimate boundary-crosser and cultural contextualizer, full of unfailing love and faithfulness (or grace and truth, depending on your translation, v. 14 and 17), the revealed glorious only Son (the rest of God’s children are adopted), the one who is “far greater” (v. 15), the unstinting Giver of one blessing after another, the unique One who is himself God, near to the Father’s heart.

It will take us the rest of our lives to absorb all this. We won’t see all the shades and details clearly until the full light of the Father’s glory shines on Jesus, when we’re with him face to face. Don’t you feel a bit jealous of those who are already there?

And then John the Baptist brings us back to earth with a thump. Jesus is the Lamb of God. My emotional reaction is similar to what I feel reading John the Evangelist’s description in Revelation 5: And I saw a strong angel, who shouted with a loud voice: “Who is worthy to break the seals on this scroll and open it? But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll and read it. Then I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll and read it. But one of the twenty-four elders said to me, “Stop weeping! Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir to David’s throne, has won the victory! He is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

From bitter weeping to the thrill of victory! But then the twist: Then I saw a Lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered.

No! No! No! How can you kill the king, the eternal one, the creator, the life-giver?

I want to linger in the glory. But John (both Johns) drive us forward, force us to our knees, back to tears, our faces on the ground. The Lion becomes the lamb, the sin of the world is my sin, the gracious, loving, faithful Truth-teller reveals to me more than I can bear. And so he bears it for me, both the hard truth and its inevitable consequence.

Do I really want the light? John asks. Because to live in light requires practicing truth. It requires confessing my sins and my need for his cleansing, the cleansing only possible because Jesus the King, the one who is life itself, became the Lamb of God, offering his life in my place (1 John 1:1-9).

Come. See.

Behold the beauty of the Lamb. The glorious one whom death could not defeat.

Places we would rather not go

But Christ is the treasure in the darkness

Isaiah 61:1-2 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.

Why must we walk with Jesus his path to the cross? Why can’t we skip directly to Easter?

Dr. Diane Langberg thinks deeply about what it means to share the anointing Jesus claimed as his own (Luke 4:20). Here is a selection from “The Fellowship of His Sufferings,” Chapter 5 of her book Suffering and the Heart of God (emphasis mine):

These verses [Isaiah 61:1-3] bring us comfort, but if we are to follow Jesus we must walk into poverty, brokenness, prisons, darkness, mourning, and despair. These are not places we desire to go. … He has called us to live and serve him in this dark place of death, this world, moving among those who are dead in their trespasses and sins, calling them to light and life.

It is not the kind of invitation most of us like to receive. He is the Man of Sorrows and familiar with suffering. He was despised and rejected. He took up our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was crushed for our sins, oppressed, judged, and cut off from the land of the living. And you and I, as the servants of God, are called to complete in our lives what is lacking in regard to Christ’s suffering, for the sake of his body.

The call to share in the fellowship of his sufferings is preceded by the call to worship, the call to truly know him as he is. … Unless we begin from the pace of worship, we will not have power to descend to the places of suffering. … God is on his throne and is our eternal refuge. Worship must come first or we will exalt ourselves and think that the drab drudgery of the rubble is not meant for us. …

God must permeate your being if you are to bring life to dead places. … We must first allow the Spirit of God to bring his power to bear in the dark and dead places of our own lives. We must begin on our knees. He has borne our selfishness, our complacency, our love of success, and our pride. There is no part of any tragedy that he has now known and carried.

God will use the suffering of others to drive you to himself for more of him. Such darkness would overwhelm and lead to despair were there not a treasure there. The treasure in the darkness is the Crucified Christ. To enter into the fellowship of his sufferings is to find him.

Fresh courage

But Jesus bears our sorrows

Isaiah 53:4-5 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows … upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

I’m sticking my neck out today, telling a very personal story in case someone out there needs it.

Palm Sunday at Church of the Ascension is full of drama, as are all the Holy Week services. Yesterday, though, my mind fixated on Isaiah 53:4 and 5 and I missed much of what ensued. I didn’t even really hear the words as they were read in the service. When I saw the reading was from Isaiah 53, the KJV leaped to my mind, reflected in the ESV quoted above.

I fought to control my tears, not wanting to disturb the people around me. If you carry our griefs and sorrows, why, Lord, am I still drowning in grief? I’ve tried hard all week to give it to you …

Later in the service, I noticed a precious friend rise to go forward for communion. I heard the Lord say, “Go to her.” So after I received communion, I walked all the way around the nave to where she was sitting and whispered, “Can you pray for me?” She made room, and asked what was wrong.

All I could say through my tears was, “A dear transplant friend died last week while Dave and I were in Ireland. After her beautiful memorial service, others from the transplant community retold their own stories. It ripped me wide open. I feel like I’m drowning in grief. I don’t understand this. It’s been nine years since Karis died.”

My friend bowed her head for a while, then she said, “I see you surrounded by God’s love. Wherever you turn, his love is there, huge, deep, encompassing. It’s all tied to the blood Jesus shed for you. But I see a hole in your heart. You need to ask him to fill it.”

Only then I realized the congregation was singing, “What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus,” which snapped me back to Isaiah 53:4-5. I asked Jesus to fill the hole in my heart.

Instantly the grief was gone.

Just like that, I could breathe again. I saw myself small, suspended somehow in the center of immense, radiating warmth and light. I reached out to take it in, soaking in the Lord’s comfort and care.

The whole thing took perhaps three minutes. Maybe less.

I told my friend I needed some time alone with Jesus to understand what was happening. I slipped into a chapel near us, off the main sanctuary, where I could be still and alone with the Lord. Engraved on the chapel altar is a carving of the Lamb on the throne “looking as if it had been slain” (Rev. 5:5-6). I’ve been in that chapel countless times but don’t remember noticing before the carving on the altar. Carved angels on each side invited me to join them in worship of the Lamb who allowed me to see him bearing my grief and sorrow, thanks to the spiritual vision and intercession of the friend to whom God had directed me.

I’m relating this because in the economy of the Kingdom, I believe such experiences are given to us not only for our personal benefit, but to encourage others as well. I hope this will be the case for you.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

From “Light Shining in Darkness” by William Cowper (18th c.). Listen here, at minute 53:03; this verse is at 54:22. Full text here.

An Encounter with God, by Kaiti Kirby, Pittsburgh

But God directs my path

Psalm 25:1, 4-5 In you, Lord my God, I put my trust. … Show me your ways, Lord. Teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

[Debbie] On this last day of Lent, Kaiti invites us to ask God for encounters with him. This morning, I read in Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores this word from Diane Langberg: “God has sent you to walk the way of the cross, obedient to his Word, serving with humility, governed by his Spirit and bowing to his authority over every aspect of your life.” We’ll consider more of what Diane teaches us as we walk the way of the cross with Jesus next week.

Here’s Kaiti:

A couple of months ago at our church, we had an ordination service for two of our deacons. During the sermon, the bishop encouraged them in their ministry, while also tangentially encouraging the rest of us in our various ministries/life stages. One of the big points he made was that in ministry, it’s our encounters with the living God that empower us. Not anything we can do, not our own skills, but only encountering the living God. That really got me thinking. I didn’t feel like I really had anything like that, at least not in a way that felt tangible to me at that moment.

Not too long after this, I realized that I generally did not feel like I had a very close, personal relationship with God, and I felt sad about this. A friend encouraged me to start praying for encounters with God. I hesitated, feeling like it was unfair of me to ask. Certainly, I thought, I had encountered God many times in my life and just wasn’t remembering. But when I expressed this, my friend said, “Well, yeah, it is unfair. But God invites us to ask anyway.” So I started to pray that I would encounter God.

Pretty much immediately after this conversation, I saw that one of my Bible readings for the next day was Psalm 25. This was significant because God had used Psalm 25 in another situation months before to speak to me—one of the encounters my friend and I had just discussed on the phone. So there I was, having not even brought the issue directly to God yet He was already starting to answer my prayer.

Not only that, but when I got to my Bible Study for the next morning, the other part of my reading included Exodus 33, where Moses asks God if he can see His glory, and God shows up to Him. Moses asked for an encounter with God, and God said yes. To me, this was a clear “Yes, Kaiti, you can ask. And I will answer.” So I decided to keep asking. 

After a week or so, I realized I had already forgotten to keep praying for closeness with God, and I was struggling once again with feeling distant from Him. So I picked it back up. A day or two later, as I walked past the Catholic school right next to my dorm building, I saw a little booklet of papers flying across the sidewalk towards the road. Curious, assuming it was from the school, I picked it up. It was a bulletin from the ordination service!

That’s strange, I thought. The church is only a block from my dorm, but how, almost two weeks after the service, did it show up here? I pulled out my phone to take a picture to express my surprise to friends from church. But then I noticed there was writing on the back of the bulletin. And it hit me. It was my bulletin from the service!!

After the service two weeks before, I had walked back to my dorm, realized I had forgotten something at church, left the bulletin on a table outside my building to go back, and then forgot about it. And here I was, almost TWO WEEKS later, and here was my bulletin, busted up and dirty, and yet with my pen-inked notes perfectly intact, quite literally blowing across my path at the perfect moment. If I had walked by thirty seconds earlier or later, I would’ve missed it.

It wasn’t until I called my brother about it (someone had to know!) that I even remembered what the sermon had been about. This dirty busted up bulletin I was holding, which so conveniently flew across my path two days after praying for encounters with God, had a note on it from two weeks before that read, “it’s our encounters w/ the living God that empower us.”

I was like, alright God, I hear you. That’s pretty clear. Can’t really pretend that didn’t happen. To further solidify this as an encounter with God, two days later, I attended a women’s retreat led by Debbie, in which one of the talks was literally called “God Encounters.” We had the opportunity to share our own God Encounters. It seemed a perfect opportunity, and a bit of a wink from God that that’s really what this was—an encounter with the living God. 

So this bulletin has become an Ebenezer for me—a rock of remembering. It’s a tangible reminder that God is real, He’s listening, and He is very present in my life. 

True Home, by Susannah Davenport, Pittsburgh

Note from Debbie: We’re just home from Ireland, a bit jet lagged–more about that soon. While we were there, our dear “transplant friend” Carissa went to her True Home. Meanwhile, a Pittsburgh friend sent me this “But God” experience. Thank you, Susannah. We travel today to participate in Carissa’s memorial service tomorrow.

But God’s light overcomes darkness

John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.

In 2015 my older sister Jessica was diagnosed with Stage IV Brain Cancer. She was 36 years old and had two daughters, aged 9 months and three years old. After her first operation to remove the biggest part of her brain tumor, my sisters and I went to visit her. In her darkened recovery room, my sister Shelley said, “Jess, you know we would all take this from you in a heartbeat.”

Jessica responded, “Oh, no. I’m glad it’s me because I couldn’t bear it if it were any of you.” She then revealed to us that she had lost her faith in God many years before, and instead of trying to find Him, she was waiting for God to find her. But if she died, which the doctors said she most likely would, she hoped He would find her before then.

Jessica’s brain cancer progressed quickly, and by Thanksgiving she was in Hospice at home. She was fading quickly, growing weak and frail. Her head was swollen and she lost sight in her left eye.

By Christmas, her cognitive functions were failing, and she could barely understand what was happening around her. She still recognized us, but time was running out. Her husband, who is Catholic, begged her to see a priest and join the Catholic church to receive communion before her death. She agreed, and on the morning of Christmas Eve a priest came to give her communion.

We gathered around Jessica’s bed, and he anointed her. The room was very dark because it was cloudy outside. She was propped up in bed, staring to the side as he tried to talk to her. Her eyes began to droop and for a moment we thought she might be falling asleep. But after the priest finished praying, she looked up suddenly. She was alert and clearly recognized us—her siblings—standing around her.

Each member of my family remembers a little differently what happened next. I saw the room fill with sunlight. My sister Shelley said Jessica’s face was glowing. Regardless, the room was no longer dark. Jess said softly in surprise, “Oh. It’s so light in here. You have no idea how dark it’s been.” She looked around at each of us with a weak smile of relief.

The priest said, “That’s the light of Christ, Jessica.”

She said, “Oh…I’m hungry. Let’s have bacon and eggs!” 

We lost Jessica less than two weeks later, on January 6th, 2016. She had multiple military honors at her funeral and was buried with the American Flag draped over her coffin.

The night before her passing Shelley and I had the same dream that a lion (much like Aslan) was guiding a dark-haired girl into the trees, her hand resting on his mane as they walked. 

Shutterstock: Sharon Vitor

I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Jessica received the gift of eternal life and our Heavenly Father called her to her True Home.

Healing at the lake, Part 4

But God knows our story

John 21:3-6, 17, 19-22 [After Jesus’s resurrection] Simon Peter said, “I’m going fishing.” “We’ll come, too,” [six other disciples] said.  But they caught nothing all night. At dawn Jesus, standing on the beach, called out, “Children, have you caught any fish?” No, they replied. Then Jesus said, “Throw out your net on the right-hand side of the boat.” So they did, and they couldn’t haul in the net because there were so many fish in it. …

Psalm 32:1-2 Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt!

[After breakfast] A third time, Jesus asked Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time. He said, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Then feed my sheep.” … Then Jesus told him, “Follow me.” Peter turned around and saw behind them the disciple Jesus loved. … He asked Jesus, “What about him, Lord?” Jesus replied, “… What is that to you? As for you, follow me.”

Have you ever wondered why Jesus chose this particular setting for his pivotal conversation with Peter after the crucifixion and resurrection, after Peter’s denials warranted a return to the moniker “Simon”?

This miraculous catch of fish is a reprise of Luke 5, offering Peter another chance to recognize and reconnect with Jesus, and with God’s call on his life. A chance to accept forgiveness and to move beyond his failures. A chance to heal his story.

God met me as well, on ensuing visits to the lake. Fast forward from the story I told in the last post. I’m now fourteen, graduated from boarding school, fearful of the future. Sitting alone overlooking the lake, I told the Lord I wasn’t ready to leave Guatemala because I had not yet learned to love. I acknowledged my heart full of resentment and bitterness. I didn’t want to take all that with me into whatever awaited me in my new life in the United States, where my parents would send me for high school. But how could I change? I had confessed my anger and hurt, but it refused to die, rearing its ugly head on a daily basis.

Romans 12:2 was the verse I was considering: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” You’ll have to do it, Lord. I have no idea how to change the way I think. On the surface, nothing (apparently) happened. But it was a place marker, an anchor, an intention, a hope: “Someday, somehow, I will learn how to love other people.”

Shutterstock: Christopher Moswitzer

Fast forward twenty-five or so more years. A different country, a different lake, a different language. A big difference this time because I’m not alone. A dear friend is listening to my despair over Ephesians 5:1-2, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children, and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us.”

“For most of my life,” I confessed to my friend, “I’ve begged God to teach me to love him and to love other people. But I don’t know how. I have no idea what it feels like to be a dearly loved child.”

“Then let’s ask him to show you,” she said. What followed was one of the most powerful prayer visions I have ever experienced. It healed a fracture line in my soul. It changed forever the way I knew Jesus and the way I viewed myself and other people. Literally, it saved my life. It was the beginning of learning the Romans 12:2 different way of thinking I had begged God for at fourteen.

Why did this healing take so long? Why did I have to go through so much trauma and drama between fourteen and forty? I’ll probably never know. But I’m grateful, so thankful that it did happen. It was an essential foundation stone in the healing journey that has continued through the almost thirty years since that day. 

Tomorrow Dave and I plan to board a plane for Ireland, for a “triple trip,” celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary last August, Dave’s St. Patrick’s Day 70th birthday, and researching Book 3 of the Cally and Charlie series. I have the sense—though I don’t know how, exactly—that the week in Ireland will be another significant step in the healing God continues in my life. I’ll let you know!