But He did, so it is.
I woke up extra early this morning. I sat in beautiful silence and read about the last week of Jesus' life. It was a chaotic mess, that week. His best friends were clueless. One of them betrayed him, one denied him not once, but three times, and the rest were secretly fighting about who He really was and which one of them was His favorite. People were confused and outraged and just plain crazy.
He asked for a simple drink of water and was denied it. He was slapped across the face for answering a question. He was screamed at, laughed at, mocked, beat almost to death, and then put to death for doing absolutely nothing wrong.
And yet He was just as calm as a cucumber. He took it in stride. He was human so He felt every emotion that we feel, yet He never blew his top, threw a fit, burst into tears out of anger and frustration or said, "Screw this, I'm outa here."
Yet, just an hour after reading that story I was in a complete tizzy trying to get the kids out the door. I changed clothes twice due to VPL (visible panty line, duh), I spilled a huge glass of milk all over the floor, and I had to resort to the migraine medicine before 8:00 AM. As soon as I sat down in the pew my husband leaned over and said, "I'm going to throw-up," and then raced out of the church like he was on fire.
And all I could think was, "Screw this, I'm outa here."
I'm ashamed of myself.
I'm ashamed that I felt all smug and down-to-earth for only getting my kids one book each this year and telling them the truth about the Easter bunny.
I missed the point.
Thank you, Jesus, for being an example to a suburban Mom 2,012 years after your life. You are always relevant. And if you can stay focused and in control during that chaos, then by all means so can I.
And now I am going to take a deep breath, remain calm, and take advantage of the remaining hours in this day to make sure my family "gets" it.
All will not be lost.
3 comments:
Totally agree with all your thoughts here. Andy played off the sick feeling well during announcements...I couldn't tell.
I always feel a bit conflicted with this too. In our family we just recognized Easter as a fun spring holiday. We emphasized celebrating Christ's death, burial, and resurrection every Sunday, and that's what we told our kids. But when other "Christians" are really getting into the Easter holiday, it makes me feel like I'm bad for not getting into that. Does this make any sense at all? When Jesus asked us to remember him with the bread and wine he didn't really give any other instructions, and we have the example of the Christians in the NT doing that on the first day of the week. I think it's probably okay to get into Easter resurrection stuff, just make sure that you live it all year!
Man if your kids don't get it, mine really won't. Erick took the kids to a Good Friday service at another church and it really moved Raegan. She's still talking about it. Honestly I really enjoy the solemn ways different churches celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus leading up to Easter. I meant to take them to a really hands on walk through exhibit at another church but didn't get around to it. Next year. And in the effort of minimalism and not being a super consumer, we just recycled dresses and shirts from last year.
By the way Robin, your son's blog about this topic was really precious. Did you see it?
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