Tag: Ireland

You had to have been there

But Jesus speaks about what he has seen and heard March 17, 2025

One of many rainy days in Ireland, we ate delicious fish pie at the Old Thatch, featured in Horse Thief 1898 and Facing the Faeries 1906. This inn ad bar has fostered community in the small town of Killeagh since 1650. Roaming the emerald isle, we could have used the umbrella Dave received as a birthday gift at his family party yesterday. Dave and I have learned to bundle up enough to walk in subzero weather. Now we can walk together in the rain too! A goal for the rest of 2025: walk outside every day, even if only around the block, once we get home from our trip to Colombia next week..

Happy birthday, Dave! Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Two years ago today, Dave and I landed in Dublin, with a triple purpose: to celebrate his 70th birthday, to (belatedly) celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary, and to experience and research parts of Ireland for Facing the Faeries 1906, Book 3 of the Cally and Charlie historical fiction series. I had already written this blog, featuring Ghana, when I realized it would be posted on March 17. I could have used Ireland instead, an equally relevant experience to communicate “you had to have been there,” as we consider our Lenten question(s) #3 from the gospel of John. Oh well, here you go …

John 3:7-10 Jesus replied [to Nicodemus], “I assure you; no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.” … “How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked. Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? … If you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

John 3: 31-32 [John the Baptist said] “We are of the earth, and we speak of earthly things, but he [Jesus] has come from heaven and is greater than anyone else. He testifies about what he has seen and heard. … For he is sent by God. He speaks God’s words, for God gives him the Spirit without limit.”

I’d read about Ghana, exchanged emails with Ghanaians, talked with a Ghanaian visitor to Pittsburgh, and even seen videos and documentaries based in Accra. But being there was something else entirely. Those few days enriched and changed me, not only sensorially but spiritually as well. I can try to describe to you, and you can imagine to some degree, but unless you visit Accra and participate in worship there, you’ll have only a shadow of understanding what my words mean: the wonder and joy of full-throated, dancing praise in a dozen languages at the same time, embellished by the blazing colors of Ghanaian fashions. I experienced it as a foretaste of Heaven.

So I empathize with Nicodemus, and I think Jesus does too. I’ve read Jesus’ question, “yet you don’t understand these things?” as a rebuke. But as I read it now, I imagine Jesus saying this with a different tone of voice, one of sympathy and acknowledgement of the limitations of Nicodemus’s experience. For all his learning, Nicodemus can no more understand Heaven than I could accurately imagine Accra. Even now, having been there only once and only for a few days, I know my knowledge of Ghana, vivid as it is in my memory, remains woefully small.

But Jesus lived in Heaven from all eternity. He speaks, John the Baptist says, of what he has seen and heard. When he speaks of the infinitely costly Trinitarian love behind his incarnation, for the sake of saving the world (not condemning it), he knows what he’s talking about. I imagine Jesus’s mind flooded with memories of the divine consensus that resulted in his sitting beside Nicodemus in the darkness of that night, shining eyewitness light into the dimness of this scholar’s third- (fourth-? fifth-? hundredth-?) person understanding of Scripture.

In concert with the Trinity, Jesus had created Earth and humanity. And now, he experienced human emotions, limitations, and frailties firsthand, allowing him to personally connect with Nicodemus’s doubts and questions and needs. Through the Holy Spirit, he does the same with us. Because he became a man, breaking down the barriers between Heaven and Earth, we can walk straight into God’s throne room to share our joys and sorrows, anxieties and hopes with the King of kings, with no fear of recrimination. The same ease, I thought yesterday, with which our grandchildren soak up Dave’s warm affection.

Birthday banner the four grandkids made for Dave yesterday

So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most (Hebrews 4:14-16).

P.S. The planning team for the huge event in Bogotá next week just sent Dave this sweet tribute:

Happy birthday, David.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14vlyIDml6xHiXzdqW8b1kILvDiRUULxF/view?usp=sharing

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.