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.

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 45^th wedding anniversary last August, Dave’s St. Patrick’s Day 70^th 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!

Healing at the lake, Part 3

But Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid”

Luke 5:4-10 Jesus said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.” “Master,” Simon replied, we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.” This time the nets were so full of fish they began to tear! … When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, “Oh, Lord, please leave me—I’m too much of a sinner to be around you.” … Jesus replied to Simon, “Don’t be afraid.”

Romans 8:1-2 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. … The life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin. … Letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.

The sun grew warm as I built a sandcastle with my brother and sisters. I took off my sweater and laid it on a rock. After a while, we ran to the lake to splash in the waves lapping the shore. When I returned, my sweater was gone.

My seven-year-old heart was terrified to tell my mother I had lost my sweater. I delayed returning to our vacation house for as long as I could. Thus I was doubly in trouble, not only for my carelessness but for not showing up in time to help with lunch. I was denied lunch and grounded for the remaining day and a half of our vacation. But what hurt most were the words my mother poured out on me, and the tone of those words. I’m not sure I learned to be more responsible. I do know my fear of her dug even deeper roots into my soul.

It’s natural for a child to project that experience of fear onto God, to assume God is like our parents or other authority figures who haven’t known how to support and encourage us. The breakthrough, healing moments (I’ll tell about one of them in the next post) come from discovery that Jesus isn’t like them. That’s what Simon learned.

“The Chosen” depicts Simon in BIG trouble over his debt to the Roman government. The miraculous catch of fish more than paid Simon’s taxes. It freed him to give up fishing and follow Jesus.

But Simon had an even bigger debt, the debt of his sin, which made him ashamed to come close to the Holy One. Dane Ortlund in his precious book Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, points out in almost every chapter that the only safe thing to do with ourselves when we recognize our sin is to go straight to Jesus. Remember the story in John 8 of the woman caught in adultery? (No mention is made of the man … apparently, she was committing adultery by herself.) Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Compassion. That’s what we’ll find when we go to Jesus in our sin. He weeps over the wounding that takes place within us and in others when we sin. He wants to free us from sin’s devastating impact.

Ortlund says (page 174), “His love is great because it surges forward all the more when the beloved is threatened, even if threatened as a result of its own folly.” I wish for courage this Lent, for you and for me, to trust Jesus’s heart of love, his compassion, his gentleness, his longing to connect with us, to free and heal us. Hear him say to you as he did to Simon, “Don’t be afraid.”

Healing at the lake, Part 2, by Karen Johnson, Hershey, PA

But God wipes away our tears

Revelation 7:17 For the Lamb on the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

I invite you to come back with me to the dock by the lake. The sun is dancing off the rippled surface, and the air is just hot enough to make the cool water inviting. I turn around and, with total abandon, fling out my arms and fall backward into the lake. As the water welcomes and envelops me, Jesus gives a loud whoop and dives in beside me. We swim and frolic in the amazing creation that is water. As I float on my back, I delight in the warm sun on my face and am caught by the wonder of the green trees on the shore contrasting with the clear blue sky.

A fog rolls in from the land, dark and sinister, and I suddenly find myself on the dock, wrapped in a wet towel, dripping, cold, and frightened. Jesus pulls himself up onto the dock and, with a smile, takes my hand. As we head up the slope towards the house, he leads me over to a stream I was never aware of before. He invites me to sit with him beside the brook. He puts his arm around me with what I think is a blanket, but then I realize that I am fully clothed and warm and dry. Even my hair is dry!

As we sit in the warm sun, we wrap our arms around our knees and lean into each other as we laugh at the water tumbling over the rocks. “I really love where the deeper water flows smoothly over the rocks, too,” I say. “It makes me want to touch it. It’s like the smooth black stone in the rough sidewalk that I always stop to rub my foot over.” Jesus soaks in my delight at his cleverness in giving even a little stream bed such wonderful variety.

Soon it’s time to go. Jesus pulls me to my feet, and we head up the slope, hand in hand, our arms swinging between us. As we approach the house, a fog like a swarm of bees rushes towards us. Jesus angles his body so that he absorbs the onslaught, and the swarm dissipates into the air. Knowing trouble is waiting for us, Jesus gives me a cheeky grin and a wink.

I find myself at the table, enduring an unending harangue about how horrible I am to have come inside late, but Jesus is in the chair next to me, sitting close in solidarity with me. As the barrage of words overwhelms me, he pulls me onto his lap and starts whispering in my ear about how he loves me and how much fun he had playing in the water with me and how delighted he is by my tender heart.

“I don’t condemn you,” he says. His words soothe me so that I drift off to sleep, curled against his chest. I awaken when I’m instructed to make sandwiches for lunch. I hop off Jesus’s lap. He again takes my hand and asks, “How can I help?” We go together into the kitchen. He knows how much I love working with other people in the kitchen!

As we spread slices of bread across the countertop and mix up tuna salad, our shoulders bump. We laugh as we remember what a fun morning we had. We replay the vision of the sun on the water and the trees against the sky. We delight in the lush green grass of the lawn and the flowering trees outside the kitchen window. We remember the brook as it tripped and fell over stones on its way.

“What about the others?” I ask. “I’m so sad for the pain they feel.”

“Don’t worry,” Jesus comforts me. “I’ve got them. You don’t have to fix them. I’m big enough to love them too. I don’t even have to leave you in order to take care of them. I’m holding each of you. You couldn’t see it, but I gave gifts to them at the table while you slept on my lap. I let your mom know that you were sheltered from the pain of her words, even as she felt powerless to stop them. That comforted her soul. Your dad was reassured that someone bigger and stronger than either of you was there to protect the child he loved. He could rest in my strength.”

“Thank you for caring for all of us,” I say. “Thank you for a lovely morning, and for bringing the joy of the lake into the house, to the table, and into the kitchen. Thank you for delighting in all the beauty with me. Thank you for a wonderful weekend at the lake.”

With a deep sense of peace, we get in the car together and drive away.

Healing at the Lake, Part 1 of 2, by Karen Johnson, Hershey, PA

But God … Where are you?

Psalm 42:1-2 As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him? Day and night I have only tears for my food, while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, “Where is this God of yours?”

I invite you to join me at the end of a dock on a bright, sunny day. The sun is dancing off the lake, and the air is just hot enough to make the cool water inviting. I turn around and, with total abandon, fling out my arms and fall backward into the lake. The water welcomes and envelopes me, filling me with a thrill of excitement. I dive deep, then swim back up to break the surface. The sun is bright in my eyes and warm on my face, even as my body in the water shivers with delight.

I look back and see Jesus running down the dock. With a whoop of joy, he dives into the lake. He comes up next to me with a big grin as He flicks the hair out of his eyes. We laugh and swim and frolic in the water. I am aware of a smoggy, oppressive tinge to the air, even on this sunny day. While it weighs on me, I ignore it for now and focus on the warm sun and the joy and freedom I feel as I glide through the water, a cheerful companion at my side. My gangly pre-teen body feels strong and graceful.

But as I break through the surface and flip over to float on my back, I sense a chill in the air. The smog has thickened into a black fog that snakes over the dock from the land. Suddenly, I am standing on the dock, wrapped in a towel but shivering and cold. My hair hangs in wet hanks and drips down my back. I am enveloped by the dank, dark fog.

I slowly trudge up the dock towards the house. As I start up the grassy slope, my attention is caught by a stream I never knew was there at the far edge of the lawn. Curious, I investigate. A brook tumbles down the hillside towards the lake. I love water in its many forms, but I am strangely devoid of emotion as I see this cheerful little stream bubbling over the rocks. I turn back and plod towards the house.

As I near the door, the fog thickens and is like a swarm of bees coming at me, piercing and smothering me. I know I’m in trouble. I suddenly find myself inside, sitting at the table, being berated for staying outside too long. The harangue goes on and on and on and on as I am told how selfish and inconsiderate and rebellious I am. How dare I enjoy the sun and the water when we need to pack up and get ready to leave? Who do I think I am to leave the work to everyone else?

I sit there, shivering and cold and alone, absorbing into myself every word that is said. My dad is there, but he doesn’t defend me and seems powerless to make the onslaught stop.

When the tirade winds down, I am instructed to go to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the trip. I love to help, but instead of delight at contributing to a team effort, I stand at the counter, bread slices spread out in front of me, mixing a batch of tuna salad, hating myself. Sobs quietly rack my body and I want to hurt myself to get rid of this horrible guilt and shame and anger.

At the same time, I am aware that this entire scenario was totally unnecessary. I was given permission to go out and play. I was a child, out on the water, with no way of telling the time. All that was required was for the adult to pay attention to the time and what needed to be done and cheerfully call me in when it was time to get ready to go. I would have reluctantly left the water but happily come inside to help. I love to help!

Another thread weaves through my thoughts and weighs down my heart: sadness for the pain that consumes those I love. Pain that would cause a mother to so berate her sweet daughter and cause a father to look on so helplessly. Is God powerless to do anything for any of us?

Under this cloud, we drive away from the weekend at the lake. God, where are you? Why is there no connection between the delight on the water and life in the house and in the car as we drive away? Where is the peace and joy your Spirit is supposed to give us? Why can’t I find you? Why is the girl who frolicked in the water such a miserable failure yet again?

No, don’t be quiet

But Jesus heals us so we can see

Mark 10:46-52 As Jesus and his disciples left Jericho, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus was sitting beside the road. When he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” “Be quiet!” many of the people yelled at him. … But Jesus stopped and said, “Tell him to come here.” So they called the blind man. “Cheer up! Come on, he’s calling you!” Bartimaeus threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. “My rabbi,” the blind man said. “I want to see!” And Jesus said to him, “Go, for your faith has healed you.” Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus.

Epiphany. A season of revelation. Of a clearer vision of Jesus.

It seems fitting that the last story in Mark before the events of Holy Week is about seeing. And that yesterday, Christians around the world considered Jesus’s transfiguration, as a portion of Jesus’s glory was revealed to his followers, Moses (representing the law), and Elijah (representing the prophets). The Father said, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him” (Mark 9:1-8), then Moses and Elijah were gone, and the disciples saw only Jesus.

How have you seen Jesus during these weeks of Epiphany? Has God opened your eyes in some way? Has he spoken to you personally or acted on your behalf to change the direction things were going? What’s your story of encounter with God?

Between Epiphany and Holy Week, we walk with Jesus through Lent. Many evangelical Christians don’t have experience with observing Lent. I knew nothing about it when I was growing up. On Thursday I plan to post my current thoughts and recent experience of Lent. Perhaps you’ll want to take steps toward honoring this in-between season, observed by many in Christ’s church almost from the beginning.

Also during the weeks of Lent (Feb. 23-April 1), I want to publish your story about how you have seen God’s revelation of Jesus during Epiphany. Write it down in one page and send it to me at debrakornfield@gmail.com. Your story will encourage others and you’ll have it to refer to yourself when you need reassurance that God sees you and cares for you.

During Epiphany, we’ve been looking at the question, “Who is this man?” from Mark’s point of view. Perhaps you’d like to look back over the topics we’ve considered since January 6. Ask God to open your eyes to see what he wants to show you and to open your ears to hear the words of love he is always speaking to you.

“I want to see!” The passion and desire of a lifetime poured into Bartimaeus’s words. I love that Jesus asked him what he wanted, giving this man the opportunity to use his voice and express what had been stomped down inside him his whole life.

Do you, too, want to see? Don’t be quiet. Cry out to the Lord for his mercy and healing.

Are you salty?

But Jesus was a poet

Mark 9:50 Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other.

A doctor. A groom. Old cloth and new cloth. Old wineskins and new. Civil war. A farmer, seed, thorns, birds, good and bad soil. A lamp, a basket, and a bed. A mustard seed. Food. A cup of water. A millstone. Salt.

Jesus may not have written poetry per se, but he was a poet. In the first nine chapters of his Gospel, Mark recorded Jesus using all these images. Imagery—described by Ezra Pound as “an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time”—is the primary resource of poets, using concrete objects to elicit sensory responses. Imagery, a product of imagination, touches our own imaginations and communicates both more deeply and broadly than simple prose. The more we think about an image, the more we learn from it.

Take salt, for example. We mostly think of salt as providing flavor. In Jesus’s time, though, fish and meat were preserved by drying and salting. It’s still done today. I was surprised our first Christmas in Brazil to see rows of fish hanging from the ceiling of supermarkets or heaped in large bins. I learned this was bacalhau, dried and salted cod. Bacalhau is used in a variety of Brazilian dishes, but it’s now expensive enough to be reserved by most people for special holidays.

Salt has also been used since ancient times as a disinfectant. Gargling with salt water can help a sore throat. If you skin your knee while camping and didn’t bring a disinfectant with you, you can clean the wound with salt water. It kills microbes by dehydrating them.

A high school friend of Karis’s once told me that if she approached a group of classmates sometimes one of them would say, “Stay away a minute, Karis. You won’t like this story I’m telling.” Gossip and off-color stories weren’t part of the conversation when she was around. “But,” her friend said, “she was so much fun we loved having her with us. She was always up to something intriguing or mischievous.”

Jesus’s hearers would not have associated being salty with our concept of a “salty conversation,” or reacting to a slight or minor loss in a “salty” manner. These more recent idioms mean the opposite of what Jesus was saying!

We don’t “get” how salt can lose its flavor. But Jesus’s hearers would have known that the salt in the Dead Sea didn’t taste salty. It looked like salt and had other qualities of salt, but it contained gypsum, which altered its flavor.

So how can the qualities of salt help us (and could have helped Jesus’s followers) to live in peace with each other? Adding flavor (the delight of different personalities!), preserving the life-giving dynamics of friendships, cleansing away damaging elements … All this and more (what are your thoughts?) is summed up in one simple poetic image: salt.