"'Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles if I could just see you." This music lyric has been rolling around my head lately. Oh, what I wouldn't give to see my dad again! Just for one day, I truly would walk a thousand miles.
What would you do for someone you love? Today is the day we remember what Jesus did for those He loves. We recount the blood sweat and the tears shed, the brow broken and side torn. We sit before the cross and remember. I worry, though. I worry that I forget, that I numb myself to the pain He experienced. And I think, what would I do for someone I love?
I smell Mary's perfume (John 12:3) and wonder, what do I have that I can lay at Jesus' feet?
I sit at that table, eating the bread and drinking from the cup...and I cry out with the disciples, "Lord, who? Certainly not I!" Yet I know of the betrayal, the spitting in His face and turning the other way.
I am with Him in the garden, confused by His anguish because I know not what He faces...and I sleep. I abandon Him in His hour of distress, unaware of his blood-sweat.
I am there when they come for Him, slipping through the trees to hide as they bind His hands and sneer in His face. I run away.
And I am there, at the foot of the cross...drops of blood and sweat from His brow drip to my skin. My cry is lost in His: "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?" His groans and agony too much to take in, I hide my face.
All the while, I wonder. What would I do for someone I love? Jesus broke the body...God incarnate broke Himself from the Godhead and experienced hell--a world without God. He took the weight of my sin--of my guilt, my shame, my brokenness and pain--and heaped it all upon His back. He breathed His last breath. The perfect lamb, slaughtered in my place. For my soul.
אלוהים ירחם עלי
Lord, my God, have mercy on me.
Today, I am celebrating Valentine's Day by counting God's love-notes to me. I am reading this book... (if you click on the image, it will take you to the author's blog)...
and the book in itself has been a grace gift from God. I needed the reminder...the reminder that we will never experience the fullness of our salvation until we are living minutes, days, LIVES of gratitude for God's continual grace to us. His grace did not stop at the cross...it is a continual gift, maybe in the form of frosty breath on windows, a hand to hold when life gets rough, gooey chocolate brownies, a slobbery peck on the cheek from a little one...
I'm learning the practice of thanksgiving...of counting God's graces, and in doing so, impregnating my life, my days, with new wonder and awareness of God's goodness. We say it so flippantly--"God is good...all the time"--but do we really believe it with our lives? It is only when I take the time to stop, to pull out a pen and my journal and write out these simple and not so simple goodnesses, that I truly understand down to my toes what those complex and yet painfully easy-to-say words mean. God is good...all the time. All the time.
And so...the counting begins. The challenge is to make out, to take hold and hold onto, a thousand grace-gifts. And yet, somehow I have a feeling that a thousand will turn into two thousand before the days of this year role into the next. Because God IS good all the time...every second and minute and hour and day. And He never grows weary of telling us, lavishing our lives with gifts of the sweetest kind. Today, my list grows, and I am thankful.
204. a new start...every day!
205. blankets piled atop my frozen-no-more toes
206. a chance to learn incredible things about the human body
207. little chocolates in a tiny red mailbox
208. a bird chirping in the creeping warmth
209. A phone call...declaring that a beautiful child of God--once an orphan, now a forever KIRK--will be coming HOME forever! (see details HERE)
my "thankful board"
He loves me...enough to tell me every day in a thousand new ways. What beautiful gifts has He given you today?
