I had this wonderful entry 2/3 completed in celebration of the Easter holiday, and then a week just escaped from the calendar. The message is still worthwhile, so I’ll do my best with it.
Our pastor’s message spoke of a recent bestseller that claims that, with enough education, Christianity will eventually go the way of “folk gods” like Thor, Zeus, etc. But what none of those gods offer, and the reason we need Jesus (and implicitly to believe in Easter) is because we have all fallen short of God’s glory, and we will all need a savior. We need hope, we need divine turnaround in our lives, we need places filled that no man, woman, money, job, no (insert temporary joy here) can make whole.
As wonderful as the sermon and the entire service were, there is another aspect of Easter Sunday morning that touched me. I ran into a friend and fellow church worker who has been through a battle. Her 15-year-old daughter gave birth to a baby recently, fathered by a young man that neither my friend nor her husband approved of. She has battled through the many aspects of dealing with this sort of trial—feeling betrayed, seeing dreams and innocence lost, correcting waywardness (her daughter continued in the relationship even after being forbidden to see the young man), Today she told me about the baby, and then said, “And she’s (the daughter) getting married today.” We had an extended conversation because I wanted to be sure that she was okay. She said at one point, “The Lord told me to just release her [to Him], but I was being stubborn.”
Later in the week, my next door neighbor locked herself out of the house. It was the perfect spring day, so I weeded and we laughed while waiting for rescue. Her mother-in-law, the original owner of the home and a precious sister in Christ, came to the rescue and to visit. During her brief stay, she said to me, “I just had a flashback.” Several years ago, her husband died unexpectedly. He left for work and suffered a heart attack while there; he would never see his earthly home again. She struggled mightily to bounce back from the depression that came from losing the only love of her life after 30+ years of marriage. The doctors were ready to medicate her back to happiness, but we joined hands and prayed. Today she’s remarried, glowing inside and out, and well into her 50’s, she looks my age.
My life this past week has been a reminder about seasons. Though Christ is alive each day, Easter is a season. And though Christ never changes, seasons do change. I had two wonderful reminders this week of friends who went through a season in their lives where they didn’t feel as if there was much to celebrate. In addition, I happened across Dandelion Seeds’ blog, and read an entry that speaks straight to the heart of anyone who’d be honest about love, marriage, and commitment. You can see her post here. Our task is to trust God. Once we’ve prayed, we have to release it over to God. We don’t add anything to our lives by worrying about it, anyway. So, I pray that anyone who reads this has had an awesome Resurrection Day. I did. But I pray to also be reminded, through the examples of my sisters in Christ, to turn every care, every weight, every burden, over to the Lord my God whose shoulders are so much bigger than my own. Trust God and release it over to Him, my sisters and brothers. God bless.
