Easter

Easter - I think it has to be the best example of how God is not like us. His perfect solution to the problem of sin was one that contained tremendous pain and moments of darkness. It meant that the best most precious person ever born would die the most painful death ever experienced. That one who literally had no guilt would face the very wrath of God. Fortunately I have never and never will have a clue what even a whisper of the wrath of God feels like, much less the full weight.


Pain- we in our earthly minds want to avoid it at all cost. We often falsely see it as the greatest evil. I say this as someone who has no authority to speak on the subject. But greater, more experienced minds than mine have discussed the topic- like C.S. Lewis. He called pain God's "megaphone to rouse a deaf world”. The days before the resurrection thundered with a sound that no ear on Earth can avoid.


My experience with pain almost nil. I am not strong enough to welcome pain but go kicking and screaming into it. My father has Parkinson's. It is the kind that cannot respond to medication no matter how high the dose. He has a clotting disorder than prevents brain surgery. He is one of the most lovely people I have ever known. Humble, kind, gentle, self-less, giving to a fault, and patient. I cannot express how much I love him. As I see him get worse and know that surely things are coming that are the stuff of nightmares, I think about how wrong to my mind this all seems.


A song I recently heard gave me some new angles to frame this.


Knowing the mind of God is not like mine could it be that "We know the pain reminds this heart,That this is not, this is not our home,It's not our home".
Or that "the aching of this life Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy".
Could it be that comfort can have more spiritual danger than pain? Or that loving this world blinds us to the more perfect beauty of the next?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGniRk_GcLs
Listen to the song.


Oh, but the final thought about Easter- oh, that final thought. That gentle crisp sweet dawn-with the perfect golden light rising over the horizon and the cool sweet emptiness of the tomb. God has a twist, oh what a twist. Because He is Love, I have to assume love is something deeper than comfort, more enduring than life, and always perfectly surprising to our minds.


I want to eagerly look for the surprise of Love, the twist a human mind could never dream up, the victory that makes the word victory seem too weak to really fit. 


Easter- Resurrection- soak it up