Ten Things AGAIN?

I know! Two weeks in a row. Christ's return must be soon! ;-)

Ten Thoughts for 'Holy Week':

1. I do not like to consider the events leading up to the resurrection. I like bows on packages and happy endings. But I cannot seem to escape the thought this week that we who were called to share in the sufferings of Christ must first consider His sufferings. And so I {painfully} ponder...

2. To save us is pleasing to God: "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." (Isaiah 43:25, NIV)

3. We can only have a correct perspective on God when we balance intimacy (I have called you friends) with glory (I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself...).

4. The Christian walk is such a beautiful dichotomy: die to live. Give to gain. Have power in weakness. Bear a cross to find rest.

5. To create is God's nature: In the beginning and over and over again in our lives. We, who in Christ became new creations, are being re-newed day by day, re-fined into ever-closer similarities to our Savior. Though I must walk in obedience, I cannot change me...but God in His mercy can and does!

6. It was not possible for there to be a more terrible death for our Savior: the refined physical suffering of a death on a cross; the curse of dying on a tree; the rejection of a holy Father; the wrath of God--an eternity of hell for each person--borne in a few hours. What love is this?

7. God the Father resurrected Jesus from the dead, and in so doing, declared that BOTH sin (on the cross) and its natural-born child death (via an empty grave) were defeated! If Jesus had not died, sin would have won. If Jesus had not lived again, death would have won. But through Jesus' death and resurrection, Jesus--and and us in Him--won...for all eternity. That deserves a HALLELUJAH!

8. The power of the resurrection is the SAME POWER that is at work in us as believers! Do we truly believe that? (Considering the lack of power we walk in, I suspect that we do not.) (Ephesians 1:19-20)

9. I saw a rainbow yesterday. I remembered how God, in His mercy, covenanted with mankind never again to judge with a utterly catastrophic flood...and felt so sad. God is crying out in all creation, and in His Incarnation, and in His Word, and in His people for all mankind to see Him, to repent of their sins, and to come to Him! And how very few--so very, very few--listen.

10. Another thought bouncing around in my mind for awhile: How different would we look if we pressed in to follow God in holiness? (I Peter 1:15-16) Perhaps this needs to be unpacked on another day, as there is an awful lot here.

Welp...that's all I've got for now. This week, may you know the sorrow of the sacrifice and the resplendence of the resurrection in all their fullness!

-J

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. --Philippians 3:10-11, NIV