Last night, around 11:55 p.m. was the 5th anniversary of Dawn’s passing.
Today, March 31 is her official obituary date of her death since the hospice nurse didn’t actually call her passing until well after midnight.
And I’m getting used to it.
That worries me and makes me happy–both at the same time.
Her death and my grieving upended and completely changed the trajectory of what I call my life.
I lost my faith, moved from Savannah to NMB, regained my faith through the work of the Holy Spirit and the people He kept putting in front of me, became “born-again” as I journeyed to and with Christ, met Karen, married again–and accessed the grace of God through the blood of Christ.
Your life time-line may be as parabolic as mine.
Or maybe a better mathematical expression for my life or your life is a wavelength:
Maybe I’m heading toward another crest in my life right now and I’m ignoring the impending trough.
Uggh.
If there is an inevitable, upcoming trough in my life–will I be more ready?
Will I feel less agony?
Will I be better prepared?
I am more aware of Christ’s grace now and His sacrifice.
Will that make a difference?
Tim Chester shares John 1:14 in An Ocean Of Grace: A Journey To Easter With Great Voices From The Past and it's a verse Ii’ve struggled with before in my reflections:
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
How does knowing this help my slide to the trough or the climb up?
Just knowing that the Word (Jesus) became flesh and “dwelt among us” reminds me that Jesus was fully, physically human.
When I examined what “Word became flesh” means to me, I realized that God always seemed vague, sort of thundery–an impossible abstraction.
I think Jesus taking on full humanity reveals God’s glory and grace in a way that goes far beyond making offerings and sacrifices in a tent-like tabernacle in the desert.
Jesus in the flesh pushes way past Moses and his tabernacle–Jesus becomes the tabernacle in my life.
Tim Chester writes of Christ’s grace and truth:
“Grace is God’s undeserved kindness. What we deserve is judgment and hell; but what we get in the gospel is forgiveness and glory. And this grace comes to us through Jesus. His death makes the blessings of grace possible…Jesus is not only gracious–He’s full of grace.”
Yesterday, I was on the tee box with two Jews (sounds like a joke set-up) and somehow we got on to what the number 666 means and whether or not there is a God and how could one NOT believe there is a God.
Not exactly an erudite roundtable of theologians considering the brief time we were standing there waiting to tee-off.
What I realized was that neither of my Jewish friends had any conception of Jesus Christ.
He truly does not exist in their lexicon of faith and worship of God.
And I said so.
And then we teed off.
What does having a personal relationship to Jesus even mean then–if you can believe in God but not know Jesus?
Thomas Watson (d. 1686), another persecuted Puritan from England that Tim Chester introduces, writes of how I think about Jesus in A Body Of Divinity:
“The name of Christ is sweet;
Like music to the ear,
Like honey in the mouth,
Like a cordial for the heart.”
Jesus was a man like me and His life was just as much a wavelength and a parabola as mine.
His agonizing trough was, I think, the beginning of my way up.
I thank God for the sacrifice Jesus made when He came to earth as a humble human. I ask that You would help us to fully understand the importance of living our lives in a way that honors the sacrifice that Jesus made for us. May we continue to be in awe of the mystery of Christ’s Easter death and resurrection.
Amen.