A Thank-You Card to Jesus

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Hebrews 13:8

Nobody writes much about where you grew up, your home, your clothes, your shoes, your school.  I mean, we don’t even know very much about your childhood at all, except for the time you talked to the rabbis in the temple – when your parents thought they’d lost you. So I guess most of it really wasn’t worth mentioning.  I mean, it was probably all kind of ordinary back in those times. 

But one day, you started calling people to you.  Disciples.  They were ordinary men, but you saw something special in them, didn’t you?  You saw who they were going to be.  You had big plans for them. 

Then you started teaching.  And Jesus, this is the best part.  You used stories about ordinary people and ordinary lives to teach your extraordinary message of love, of forgiveness, of the Kingdom of Heaven.   

Thank you.  Even if I don’t count the miracles of healing and transformation, even if I don’t count your resurrection, even if I don’t count all of the supernatural, God-parts of your life – you showed me something.  You showed me how very extra-ordinary life can be.  You showed me the holy in the every day.  You showed me God in the ordinary.  You showed me grace.  Amazing grace.

But I can’t discount your God-side.  Because you are.  The Way.  The Truth.  The Life.  So you didn’t have to do what you did.  You didn’t have to live, walk, breathe, eat, sleep, laugh, and cry.  You didn’t have to suffer the punishment and death of an ordinary criminal.  But you did.  For us.  For me.  And that made everything extraordinary.

Jesus, thank you.

Linking with Lisa at Five-Minute Friday

The Splendor of His Holiness

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

bring an offering and come before him.

Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

1 Chronicles 16:29

Everything is holy...

She moved gracefully, humming as she pulled up the tangle of sheets, smoothing them, tucking in the errant corners - those wayward ends that threatened the oh-so-perfect lay of the bed.

My chains are gone, I've been set free.... It was that music from church - the song that blended old with new - the one that kept going through her head...

Lovingly, tenderly, she folded the quilt at the foot of the mattress - just so - the handmade quilt her own grandmother had made with the meticulous stitches and color like an English garden - muted hues and pattern.  She paused in her ministering of the bed, and sang the words out loud - right there in her bedroom, into the quiet and stillness of the morning.

And like a flood His mercy reigns,
Unending love, amazing grace.

She loved how the song fit together - perfectly - amazing grace.  Always and forever - the old with the new.   She HAD been set free - the instant she had finally welcomed Jesus in her life, put off for so long.  She had been set free - self-forgiveness - she could let go of the years of bad choices, of trying to belong for all the wrong reasons, of the loneliness of trying to do everything herself.  Independent.  Strong.  Wrong.

And now she stood quietly beside the bed.  Waiting.  She knew how to be still.  Moments like this, when the jumble of her thoughts would soon focus laser-sharp onto one idea, one image;  these were the priceless moments - when she felt God close.   A holy moment.

She had been changed.  Everything IS holy, she thought.  There it was - in the instant of her stillness.  The one thought, the one idea, the thing that tied it all together.  Making the bed - memories of her grandmother standing in her apron wiping the flour from her hands, the must-be-heaven smell of fresh doughnuts and cinnamon rolls mixed with the sour-sweet odor of hay and hogs, and the turned-earth of the farm.  Everything IS holy.  Even chores.  Especially chores.  Arranging and composing the bed, the room, her home into a place of warmth and invitation.  Cooking.  Washing dishes - the water, clean and soapy, reminding her of the crisp cold of a morning swim on an early summer day.  Everything - created by Him; everything calling her to remember...

Come, he said.  Come, she thought.

Come to holiness.  Come to the day with rejoicing and gladness.  Come with a clean heart.  Amazing grace.

God, thank you for a new attitude, a new outlook - In, around, under, beside, past, present, and future, in all things, in all ways - You are Holy!


Linking with Still Saturday