cross

April 11, 2019

And A Lot of Patience

Waiting…

If you are really a Cape Codder, you will never admit that the weather is good – at least without adding a disclaimer like, “What a beautiful day! But tomorrow it’s supposed to rain/snow/hail…” True to my 40 years of being what is called a “wash-a-shore” on this sand bar, I will declare that this winter was really…not bad. We had a couple of slushy snowfalls and dustings, some frigid days but hey, it is New England. However, the spring seems to be stuck in March, reluctantly edging over the 40’s, maybe popping into the 50’s on a rare occasion. This IS the Cape, where the icy Atlantic grips 100 miles of shore, stalling out the release of new life from trees and flowers that are clamped down, waiting.

Forty years ago almost to this day, a young woman left New Jersey, which had exploded in vibrant color and life, and chugged north in a rusted out Volkswagen bus. A steamer trunk with all she owned was shoved into the back with some peacock feathers thrown on top. A down sleeping bag that had been well used for several years was tossed in last minute, just in case.

She had only been to Cape Cod once, a few weeks earlier in March, and it was cold, sleeting. “Sea frost” someone called it and it sounded mystical and poetic which drew her even more. She crossed the bridge over the canal somewhere in the afternoon and drove until she could find the ocean, then parked overlooking the gray green palette of sea, dotted with whitecaps, stretching into the empty horizon and she felt like she had arrived. She took out her notebook and wrote. But she became aware of a chilling wet cold, much colder than New Jersey and beyond the shelter that the old bus and sleeping bag would provide, so she pushed on – to Wellfleet. There, kismet led her to a tiny cottage near the bay. There was no heat or hot water, but a small wood stove would warm up the little room quickly and the stove could heat up a pan of water for bathing. As the sky turned dark, the peepers rang out across the marsh. Spring is here, they said. Close, anyway. Close enough, I thought, as I pulled the dirty sleeping bag over my head.

Forty years. I am 63 now, and as I look back to that strange girl, I can hear the peepers and smell the salt mixed with pine on the breeze coming up over the marsh. I can remember how my heart needed to run, to keep looking, and the temporary peace I found next to the ocean, with the world and all of it’s confusion behind me. I don’t remember feeling cold, or dirty or worried at all – I had enough money for beer and cigarettes. I had no phone so I would rely on the mail and that was sufficient for someone who really just wanted to be left alone. Yet I craved more than I had. I craved a higher place than survival, a wider purpose – to be filled with more than anger, doubt and a prevailing sense of brokenness. Maybe it’s here, I would think, looking out over the bay. Something that could grow and thrive. I wanted to trust in Hope, but Jack Daniels was safer, easier.

Seven years later, I ran into Jesus. I’d like to say that He wrapped His arms around me and gave me a big bear hug, but that’s not at all how it went. First, I had to die. And since I was literally almost dead from doing things my way, it wasn’t a big stretch to surrender my will, my pride and my mess.

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. John 12:24-25 (MSG)

It takes some time for things to grow. At the jail every week I talk to the ladies in green or yellow jumpsuits. Sometimes I get a room full of silence. The expressions can run from bland civility to deadpan to rolling eyes, smirking or smoldering contempt. But the best part of it all is the day I see a spark – so small, you would miss it if you weren’t paying attention. It’s in the eyes and it’s called Hope. And I know once I see the spark, God can build a fire.

“The cross,” I said, “is a place that represents death and the darkest despair yet also leads the way to hope and freedom and new life.” When I asked for their thoughts, one young woman leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling.

“This is really deep,” she said and a low rumble of acknowledgement went around the room. She was so right. This truth must penetrate right to the core of our soul. There it will take root, and if we are patient, something wondrous will begin to grow.

My grandson Eli discovered this first hand after I gave him a terrarium for Christmas. On the cover, you see a tropical paradise bursting from a transparent vase. What you get is a bag a dirt and a small plastic container. A four-year-old has faith to move mountains, but it’s also short-lived. After a few days, he forgot about the dirt. Then a couple of weeks later I got a Facetime call.

“Ama! ” he shouted, his little body trembling with excitement, “LOOK!”

And there it was – well, not exactly paradise, more like ordinary grass, but it was green and growing and so amazing he could barely speak. When I asked him what the secret was, he told me proudly, “A little light, a little water, and a LOT of patience!” Ah, patience!

Funny that I chose a Cape Cod April as my season to land here. I was as cold and unfriendly as the unforgiving earth. But there was promise just below the surface. I wonder…does Jesus see the small seed of Hope beneath the crusted heart? Maybe He put it there long ago, and is just waiting. Sometimes I think he calls us right to the crossroads of Nowhere-Left-To-Go and Nothing-To-Lose. Let it go – the life that is mine to begin with. Give it to me and I will breathe on it and you will really live.

I heard the peepers last week, and something in my heart leapt. The young woman I can still see in my mind is an old woman now with joints that are failing and silver strands through my hair. Someone asked me if I was in remission last week, and it took me a moment to realize she meant from cancer. “Well, I’m still here!” I answered. But I thought of another Remission – the forgiveness of my sins, the cancelled debt that was paid for in blood. As I walk through a life that flourishes with the beauty of a heavenly hope, may I never forget the cross, and the deep, unsearchable Love that gave me life, real life. And the best is yet to come.

Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Hebrews 6:18-19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQy4NUZKIeM

March 17, 2015

The Cross in the Way

I’ve been thinking about dying a lot lately. Not my physical death, which I have little control over, but the spiritual one. We love words like Resurrection and Regeneration but Jesus talks about the death part a lot and we just kind of nod and change the subject. It’s one of those things that sounds okay on a philosophical level, like helping the poor, but we’d rather write a check than sit in their living rooms. Peter passionately blurted out that he would follow Jesus, “even unto death”. But then a few pages over, we are surprised to find him ashamed of even knowing Jesus, and irritated by the annoying questions circulating about him. “I’ve never heard of the man!” Peter hadn’t really given this type of death much consideration. And to be fair, like our real death, you can’t know it until you are stepping into it. We are made to resist this. It’s called humility.

Lately my husband and I have been knocking on doors. But most of the doors have the screens punched out, the hinges busted; sometimes the steps are treacherous. Standing face to face with someone who lives behind these doors is refreshing because usually the ground is leveled. We are sinners. All of us, and that fact is hard to argue when life has obviously taken a wrong turn. Sometimes it’s just a bad deal; abuse, growing up believing you will fail, isolation. It makes you poor – not just ending up in a cruddy apartment complex where grass never grows on the dirt patch outside your broken steps but inside; in spirit, in hope.

I remember many years ago, living in a tiny house in Orleans. There were five of us in a two bedroom cottage and I ended up sleeping out on the uninsulated porch with a propane burner. I never felt poor or embarrassed. But one day my son had a friend over to play, a friend that came from a beautiful neighborhood where his parents had bought a large colonial for their family of four. I was trying to teach my kids about giving and in this great spirit, Miles joyfully gave Steven a brand new box of matchbox cars that had just been given to him. It was a sacrifice and I watched Miles’ heart lighten as his little friend, face aglow, beheld the shiny new box.

When Steven’s dad came to pick him up, he ran to him shouting with joy.

“Dad, look what Miles gave me!”

Then his dad did the strangest thing. His face flushed red and angry and he said,

“Give it back!” He was shaking.

We were all stunned, and I watched bewilderment cover Miles’ little face.

“Give it back now Steven and let’s GO!!! His dad was sputtering and would only look at the shiny box.

Steven looked at Miles, embarrassed and gently placed the box back in his hands. We couldn’t speak but I knew then I had just witnessed the most magnificent display of raw pride. So full of himself, he was unable to receive, especially from someone who seemed to have so much less. I know Miles and I learned something peculiar and sad about people that day. Roy Hession, in his book When I Saw Him, says,

“As long as we love our righteousness and are not prepared to lose our reputation, our pride forbids us to repent. But when we see Jesus losing His reputation, His all, for us, then we are melted by the love of it and are willing to be broken and take a sinner’s place. We are willing to be known as we really are.”

The snow is melting; not fast enough for any of us that have weathered the endless storms and endured the unbroken white or dirty gray landscape for the last two months but it will melt and spring will arrive (Thursday as a matter of fact) signaling new life. I like that Easter is placed right in the midst of it all. And I think its good that in the midst of lilies and colored eggs and jellybeans is a plain wooden cross that you can’t cover or change. It’s there and in its shadow we are sinners, our hearts all busted and corroded just like the doors my husband and I knock on.

We are caught in the midst of our lives by this unavoidable paradigm. There must be death before there is a new life. You can redo your old life on your own terms and probably still look good but you will never know resurrection life and the amazing power behind it unless you stand alone, before this bloody cross and surrender. Repentance is one of the most mysterious gifts God has left us. There are no deals, no part-ways in. It’s all or nothing. As we lay down every little thing that we think we can’t make it without, we enter into His death. And as we emerge from this death, we are changed. We are not a better citizen or some type of hyper super-Christian. We are humbled. And in this beautiful posture we find we are joined to Christ, in death and in resurrection. This is what made Paul, who had more prestige and power to boast of than anyone of his day, state plainly: “I count all things loss…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.” All things.

I struggle in this place and honestly; my pride totally blinds me sometimes. God is quick to point it out when I ask him, and it’s unpleasant at best to see the dark selfishness of my soul. But there is always room at the cross.

I was surprised to learn that the suicide rate is highest in the spring. Psychiatrists theorize it is a physiological response to longer days or a warmer climate but I think some folks are just too worn out to dress up the old self one more time. I remember resenting spring after my son died. I didn’t want things growing and changing. I was too tired to move forward. But there is a better death, that leads to a hidden path winding upwards, towards God’s glory, towards a whole new life, free from self and full of a joy that is unspeakable.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…

There must a death before a resurrection. Come to His old rugged cross. He is there, as we repent, to lead us to life; abundant, overflowing and everlasting.

**** This is a beautiful version of a favorite old hymn.

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=0E1BFCNU

April 10, 2014

Coming Home (or It’s Not My Party)

Friday Dawn

Cross in Ghana

I lay in the dark and tried to locate my two granddaughters by their breathing. Brooklynn, age five, had a slower, softer and more rhythmic breath. Olive, at three, had a little bear-cub growl on inspiration and I could tell she was right below me on the floor. I smiled remembering a few days ago when all three of us shared a futon and Olive seemed drawn to my left ear all night. Not much sleep. Not much sleep this night either. The birds began the dawn chorus as the room took form around me. My eyes locked onto their beautiful faces. Brooklynn had informed me this trip that she would be a teenager someday. Amusement mixed with sorrow tugged at my heart.

Friday morning

The plane leaves at 1:07 and in my usual neurotic manner I watch the clock, pacing, trying to enjoy my last few hours with my family, but I can’t. It’s time to go. Why prolong this? I request BoJangles as my last meal on hallowed Dixie ground and we stop, filling our mouths with greasy biscuits and Bo Round potatoes and swishing it down with iced tea. The biscuit is like Prozac. I kiss everyone goodbye and roll into the small airport.

Brooklynn and Olive told me they were sad I was leaving, a genuine but child-like sorrow that most likely would dissipate about 5 minutes after I leave the car. I love the simplicity of a small child’s emotions. Sad, mad, glad. Sometimes bad. I wish my own palette of feelings could stay so pure and discernible, like a Dr. Seuss book.

I think this is one of the things God had in mind when He matched me up with my husband, because C.B. has very delineated paths of thought and emotion: straight, sometimes intersecting with a vertical response but easy to recognize and sort out. When I get overwhelmed I become gridlocked like lunch hour traffic in midtown Manhattan.

Friday Afternoon

I knew Boston would be a good 40 degrees colder than Raleigh but I still failed to put on enough clothes so I sat inside, waiting for the bus, nervous it would slip past. A woman walked by pushing a cart obscured by garbage bags tied to every free inch of it and plopped down at the end of the hall. I weighed out whether I should get up, go tell her Jesus loves her, maybe give her some money, but I was more interested in myself; my bus, my comfort, my self-pity. The biscuit had worn off. I remember my mom telling me when I was a teenager that the world wasn’t about me, because I just wasn’t that interesting or important, and it stung at first, but it was true. Tender as a wounded tiger, still my mother had uncanny perspective. Life was not my party. I should know better…

Saturday morning

I had to tell God I was sorry as I sat outside the hospital in the dark, trying to pray, and realizing that I had totally blown off prayer the day before. My husband had cleaned the house and he even had fed the birds for me. But I had behaved like a sullen adolescent, withdrawn and self-absorbed. I thought about the lady with the shopping cart in the airport and I knew that God put her there for me, not just so I could help her but because she would end up helping me. I blew it.

Sunday morning

I cried over the ironing board. It tied indirectly into running out of pancake mix, which wasn’t my fault. I took Rosie around the pond at sunrise and asked God, What’s the point here? I feel like I should have an assignment if He insists on keeping me here, on earth, in New England, on Cape Cod where the north wind across the ocean feels like ice is being poured down your shirt. He gave me no answer. He was perhaps waiting for an attitude adjustment.

My husband noticed me ironing and weeping and asked what was wrong, and I repeated my conversation with God. I had no answers. He came over and pushed the ironing board to the side and put his arms around me.

“All I know is that I love Jesus,” I sobbed.

“And that’s all you need. “ he said.

I arrived at church with carefully made-up swollen eyes and a headache. If I’ve learned anything at all after following Jesus for 26 years, I’ve learned to praise Him, whether I feel like it or not, because He is always worthy. And as I lifted my hands and closed my eyes, I saw the cross before me, and the Holy Spirit gently spoke to my heart:

Here is the answer; here is the point of it all.

Terrible and beautiful in all of its mystery and power, it is the place of unfathomable pain and agony, yet immeasurable comfort and peace. I stood alone in its shadow, obscured by it.

Take up your cross and follow me.

How can I bear the weight of it? I step into the light, and every stain of my selfishness is exposed, yet a greater measure of mercy and grace flows from above, covering my shame, turning my sorrow to joy. I am home, in Him and He is in me. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. We turn to leave.

I’ve never read One Thousand Gifts and I doubt I will. It sounds too exhausting, one more impossible bar to measure up to. I’m not thankful for everything, and sometimes I’m just grumpy about being here. Nor do I find God in all things. Isn’t that panentheism? Yet in all things He is there with me.

Sometimes I wander off, like a child at a carnival. But I know the way home, and hungry, thirsty, dirty, He takes me back, fills me and lifts me high upon a rock, where I can see eternity in the distance. Then I need no explanation or plan.

Amy Carmichael, missionary to India, said, “You will find your garden very near to the place where you will be crucified.”

Sad. Mad, Glad. Thank you Jesus for leading me back to where we sometimes must begin again…at the cross.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 ESV

And whom I love in return. CB was right. It is all I need.

March 10, 2013

The Cross or What’s So Good About Good Friday?

Cross in Ghana

March is beautiful somewhere. But not here. I’ve always been a big defender of the month nobody loves because I was born right near the end of it. Hence the name, Robin, as in “first sign of spring”, although with global warming the robins have become confused and disoriented, showing up in January with beach chairs. Also, on my 36th birthday I received my best birthday present ever, my little Jake the Giant, born eight minutes after midnight. So we rally during March in my family. It’s a month of great promise if you choose to look at it that way.

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I’m looking out my window right now and it’s downright dismal. It’s like it can’t decide whether to act like winter or spring so it’s “sprinter”; a soggy, slushy mess thrown in your face at 40 MPH. There are daffodils out there, behind the fence, under the slush, shivering their little frail stems off. It’s a brutal month, coming in more like a rabid dog this year than a lion.

Yet it could be 60 tomorrow, evaporating memories of today, and we would all be at Home Depot buying seed starter kits and lawn fertilizer. We are wired to hope. Teens will be crowding around basketball hoops with their shirts off and a few motorcycles will blast down the street. The daffodils will shake it off and push upward.

This March is a hideous commercial event with Easter and Saint Patrick’s Day sharing the shelves, only two weeks apart. Leprechauns leaning on bunnies and shamrocks in the jelly beans. Not just the robins are confused! I wonder if Jesus and Patrick find it amusing or terribly sad. Religious folks prepare by putting dirt on their foreheads and giving up Dunkin Donuts for a month. Parents are required to fork out gifts for their kids, along with the overstuffed Easter basket because the kid next door got a Wii last year for Easter. Corned beef and ham dinners raise the American blood pressure even higher.

My mom used to boast that I was born on Maundy Thursday, which I thought for years was “Monday-Thursday”, like it took four days. As I grew, I realized I was born on the day celebrating the Last Supper, which preceded Good Friday, the day they crucified Jesus. I didn’t understand why either of these days were celebrated or called Good. My mom baked hot cross buns as if that explained everything.

The cross was confrontational to me even then. It seemed like everyone wanted to sing about Christ being risen but we kind of skipped over the cross. I knew that Jesus died there, a long agonizing, brutal death. He knew all about it when they ate together the night before. Betrayal, greed, denial. He carried his own cross the next day to his own death, “enduring the shame for the joy set before him.”

The older I get, the more terrifying and beautiful the cross becomes. And consequently, the more triumphant and glorious Easter Sunday is. The power of His resurrection should fuel every moment of every Christian’s life. Jesus IS risen, the stone is rolled away, defeating death, tearing the veil that separated us from perfect love, freedom, and life eternal. It is the most astounding act recorded on earth, too marvelous for words.

Yet the cross still haunts me because it is where humanity collided with God and it is messy and mysterious and unfathomable in suffering. The same shame that Jesus bore for me, where He was broken and his blood poured out for me has become my escape to joy unspeakable. I shake my head in disbelief, staggered by this love.

I like that Easter is in March this year, and I like that my birthday (and yours, Jake) falls on Good Friday. I can celebrate my entry into this world fifty seven years ago, my parents filled with wistful dreams and fragile love for their first little girl. Thirty years later, God led a broken, dirty woman to the foot of Calvary’s cross. There I was born again.

We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus. (2 Timothy 1:9 the Message)

March will usher in April. Strange how God determines that the death of things would bring new life. Creation is proving it right outside my window. My son, Spence had clipped these words from a page to “Calvary Road” by Roy Hession and tacked them to his dresser, right beside his pillow.

When we put pride to death, God imparts power and implants hope. We rise renewed. But when we revert to our self-sufficient ways, the Spirit presses in. And so we must return to the cross, mortifying the martyr in us, destroying the self-display. As we hold fast to the cross, God offers the spirit of humility. Stray from the cross and humility recedes, pride returns. It is simple; it’s the cross. Again I say the cross. I didn’t say it was easy, just simple.

There are days that I’m uncertain of why I am here, darkness descends into a private pain that is shared only with God and my heart is restless. It is then that I turn to the cross, and my darkness is swallowed up in its shadow. Jesus no longer hangs there, there are no crowds; it is silent. But I am reminded of what love truly means. In the midst of his exquisite pain, forgiveness was granted and even his mom was taken care of. I don’t have to stay there, but I can return there and remember who I am without it, that His grace still flows from it, and covers me. This is the Jesus I can never understand or explain. This is the Jesus I will follow all of my days…until death brings again, new life.