"What things?"

Ever had the bottom fall out?  Everything you had depended on, all you had dreamed of, what you thought was the real deal, gone. Crushed. Vanished. Poof. 

You thought you had life figured out. You had worked hard to get to this point. You sacrificed. You made choices, many of which can't be unchosen. 

It's a sick, empty feeling. Despair is not too strong of a word to use. 

This is exactly what ol' Cleopas and his buddy had to feel on that day they decided to walk to Emmaus. Hey, why not?  Some fresh air and excercise just might clear the fog a bit. 

The pain was so real and deep that they couldn't help but to speak of it. Disillusionment had sat in. Deeply. "I still just can't believe it," Cleopas must have said. "I know," said his walking companion, "I feel like I'm waking up from a bad dream. It just can't be real."

"I should have seen this coming. It was all too good to be true," said one. 

"No!  There has to be another explanation. You know how he taught as one with authority. You saw the blind man see again," said the other. "We're missing something."

"No," the first man said, "the only thing we are missing is our brains. We were stupid to be taken in."

"I didn't forget my brain, but I didn't harden my heart either," the other said.

"I really thought he was the One. I still do....I just...I just don't know...."

"Hi there," said a stranger. Kind of odd to see someone else on this trail but it happens. It was strange because neither of them saw the man approach. 

"I saw you discussing something. You both seem very passionate about it. What's going on?" the stranger said. 

Cleopas nearly guffawed out loud. "What rock have you been hiding under?  Haven't you heard the things that happened in Jerusalem these days?"

"What things?" the stranger asked. 

"Oh dear Lord," Cleopas thought to himself. But he didn't want to be rude. Clearly this man is out of touch with current events. Or maybe he's just a simpleton. Cleopas went on to explain to the stranger all the events that had recently taken place with this Jesus of Nazareth. He told all about his teachings, his miracles, his triumphant march into Jerusalem. Then it just all slipped away. Confrontation led to accusations. Accusations led to betrayal. Betrayal led to arrest, and then finally, horrible execution at the hands of the hated Romans. 

"But we were hoping that He was the One who was about to redeem Israel," Cleopas said, his sentence trailing off without a definite conclusion. So much dispair. 

But then the stranger said to them, "How unwise and slow you are to believe in your hearts all that the prophets have spoken! Didn’t the Messiah have to suffer these things and enter into His glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted for them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

Boom. 

"What things?" 

Yeah, right. 

Do we miss the drama of the Easter Story?

I love the Star Wars Saga, for many reasons (future post). The scene when Vader tells Luke that he is Luke's father is one of, if not the, most dramatic plot twists in cinema history. 

I can still remember watching this scene in a theater in Austin, TX while in college.  I won't ever forget it. 

It's sad though for younger generations that they mostly  can't experience the Saga in the same way. Knowing this twist in advance just severely reduces the impact of the films. So much so in fact that there is a recommended "Machete" order in which to watch the series. If one has never seen the films, the best order to watch is Episodes 4, 5 (that contains the scene above), 1 (if you must; can actually be skipped), 2, 3, then wrap up with 6. Of course now you can add in Rogue One after Episode 3 as well as add in 7 and soon 8 at the end. 

I think the Easter story is kinda like that. Knowing how it all turns out spoils the story in some ways. It's harder to measure the impact the events of the original Easter weekend had on the Apostles and those with them knowing the story from this side. We kind of glance over what the disciples did between Friday and Sunday and how shocking Sunday morning must have been. Truly, if you could show the scene of Jn. 20 to an audience that doesn't know how it ends, it would perhaps be the most dramatic scene ever, eclipsing even Star Wars!

In the account of one of those closest to Jesus, John records the event like this:

"Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance."

Whoa. What's up with this?  The closely guarded grave is empty. Grave robbers?  Vandals? Man, adding insult on top of such deep tragedy. 

"She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, "They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!""

So Mary is assuming someone has taken Jesus' body for some unknown reason. Who would do such a thing, and why?  Where would they take him?  So many questions. 

"Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first."

So Peter and John (the "other disciple" is the writer, John) hear this news and they jet off to see for themselves. It's at least a 15 minute run to get to the tomb. But they are running. What is going on in the minds of the two closest disciples of Jesus?  "Is Mary crazy?  Maybe she was mistaken. If not, what's going on?"  

I always figured Peter as a hunkering man, and so I can see him getting winded as John stretches out ahead of him and reaches the tomb first. 

"He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings."

John gets there first but then stops in his tracks when he reaches the entrance. But he can see inside and it's clear Mary wasn't crazy or mistaken. But nevertheless, John hesitates to go into the tomb. But not ol' Peter. He's never hesitated about anything ever. He doesn't give any thought to becoming "unclean" or worrying about what could have been a smelly, gross scene. 

And what do these two best friends of Jesus find?  Not only is the tomb empty but the burial linens are neatly folded in the burial chamber. Who does that?  If the body was stolen, why would they leave these linens behind, let alone to fold them neatly?

"Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed— for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead."

Boom. At least for these two. It's that moment in time when you go "Oh" and the light suddenly comes on. They go from being as despondent and disillusioned as one can be to 15 minutes and a fast run later realizing that everything you thought about life, God, yourself...everything...is changed. And NOTHING will ever be the same. Ever. Thank God!

"Then they went home."

So what do you do after your world has just been turned completely upside down?  Go home, naturally. 

They are probably still in shock and of course not knowing where Jesus has gone or what happens next, they just go back to their home to think things through most likely. 

"Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in."

But not Mary. Sometime after the boys had made their discovery Mary goes back to the tomb herself. The boys hadn't appereny taken the time to fill Mary in on what they now understand about what has happened. She's just standing there, just outside the entrance to the tomb, crying. For her, this is still sorrow upon sorrow. The man who completely changed her life and whom she had put her complete trust in was brutally, unfairly executed and now, to make things worse, if they could even get worse, she can't even experience the dignity of honoring her friend's memory and paying proper respects. It's just the bottom of the barrel for Mary. As hard or difficult as life may have been before she met Jesus, this is much worse. This is the death of hope, and not just a "maybe this could happen" but a hope she had experienced for a time in a real way. 

"She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. "Dear woman, why are you crying?" the angels asked her.

"Because they have taken away my Lord," she replied, "and I don’t know where they have put him."

She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him."

Suddenly, she notices two beings of some kind (since she doesn't freak out at this they must have just looked like people) sitting inside right were Jesus had been laid. They ask her why is she crying, which had to seem like the dumbest question ever, or maybe even an insensitive question. But she just tells them, she is upset because someone has moved Jesus' body and it's all just so wrong. She wants to know where his body is. 

Then she notices someone else standing there outside the tomb (didn't this have to be startling?). She doesn't know who it is. 

"Dear woman, why are you crying?" Jesus asked her. "Who are you looking for?"

She thought he was the gardener. "Sir," she said, "if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him."

Man, more people asking Mary why she is crying. She has to be thinking, "Why does everyone want to know why I'm crying. I mean, it's a tomb. Why would someone be crying around a tomb?"

But this dude asks her who she is looking for. She guesses this man is the landscaper of the burial grounds. Maybe he knows something. Maybe he helped take the body. She just wants to know what happened to Jesus' body. 

""Mary!" Jesus said."

One word. One word is all it took to take off the blinders. One word is all it took to change Mary's world forever. With one word, "Mary", Jesus revealed himself to his close friend and disciple. Again, it's that moment in a life when everything changes. A moment Mary surely remembered, cherished, for the rest of her life. 

Wow!  The emotion in this moment is out the roof. Can you feel it? Put yourself at that tomb, at that moment. Can you see it?  

Now, you know what's truly just as fantastic as this amazing scene?  It's your scene. It's closing your eyes and getting silent and still long enough to hear. Listen closely. Can you here it?  Yes, it's YOUR name. It's being called by the King of all creation. Can you recognize the One calling it?   

"Hey Beautiful!"

I know what this is getting at and I can see how it would be frustrating to ONLY be seen as "pretty". Unfortunately, outward appearance is almost always going to be the first thing noticed, just 'cause. However, recognizing "Pretty", or "Beauty" as I prefer to think of it, is put in man by God for a purpose I believe. You see, the Woman seems to have been gifted by God with Beauty in a way that is unique among all the creatures. It seems to me that She carries the Beauty of Imago Dei in a very special way, and in a way that the Man does not (Man carries Beauty as well but it is certainly different). Additionally, recognition of this Beauty by man and his interaction with it is so innate that sometimes it's hard to even understand. Thus Solomon wrote: 

"Three things are beyond me;

four I can’t understand:

the way of an eagle in the sky,

the way of a snake on a rock,

the way of a ship at sea

and the way of a man with a young woman."

I believe, as CS Lewis did, that all Beauty, including that of the Woman, should be seen through a lens of showcasing "Future Attractions" as a great movie trailer might (this is long but worth reading every word): 

"In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."  CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

So if it is true that God has adorned the Woman in a special way with Beauty and that Beauty in general has been given to us as a way to both provoke our desire for the True Beauty as well as to provide us a glimpse or foretaste of the True Beauty, we can draw these conclusions:

Man is naturally drawn to the Beauty of Woman because of God's purposes. 

However, when Man mistakes Woman's Beauty "for the thing itself" he creates a "dumb idol,  breaking the hearts of their worshippers", as well as the worshipped I might add. 

When a woman is only recognized for her beauty, there is a naturalness to being put off by it.  It is like giving an Academy Award only for the movie trailer.  

This is why Solomon also wrote: "Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised."

So while recognition of the shallowness and offense of a man who only recognizes a woman's beauty is appropriate, one should also recognize that the correct alternative is to recognize a woman's fear of the Lord, not her intelligence or fierceness or wit or worldly success or "charm". 

Perhaps the wisest assessment of a man who, in his shallowness and/or worldliness, will only focus his attention on the Beauty, is to know that he is recognizing something of which he knows not. But you do. 

The sincerest Pumpkin Patch ever!

"The way I see it, it doesn’t matter what you believe just so you’re sincere." 

- Linus

Linus responds to Charlie Brown's challenge to his believe in the Great Pumpkin by espousing the virtue of sincerity. And as we all know, there was no more sincere believer in the Great Pumpkin than Linus. 

But did that make it true?  Sadly, no. Truth trumps sincerity nearly every time. Wish and hope and even desire do not make truth. This truth seekers must constantly fight even there own wishes, hopes and desires to find integrity. 

But that's not what this post is about. This post turns Linus' oft quoted, sometimes maligned missive on its head. 

"It MATTERS what you believe just as long as you're sincere" 

You see, if you AREN'T sincere, who cares what you believe? It really WON'T matter. 

Sincerity often gets a bad rap among those who proclaim faith. And I get it. Truth matters. But is that to say sincerity does not?  I'd postulate that sincerity must come first or you aren't going to find truth. Truth can be so elusive that ONLY the sincere may find it. One of the old prophets, an old soul named Jeremiah, once quoted the Creator as saying "You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart" (Jer. 17:9). 

I've often told my children when they seemed to be having some "sincerity" challenges with the truth that one reason it was so important to always tell the truth is because one cannot find the truth unless one tells the truth. Why would God reveal Himself or His will or His desire to someone that won't be honest?

So Truth matters. But don't expect to find it without an honest heart. 

What Do You Love?

What do you love?

We throw the word around a lot. "I love chocolate!" or "I love the beach". Of course there are people we love. And I don't mean "love" as in obligated to show and have concern for them, but I mean we just really LOVE to be with them. They just fit. We find ourselves completely relaxed around them. We look forward to being with them when we can and miss them when we can't. This is why I married my bride. When our relationship got to the point where it was time to fish or cut bait, I couldn't stand the thought of NOT being with her. After we were married, someone asked me about getting married and I said, "Oh, I had to."  At first they thought I meant "I HAD to" like with shotguns and all. But no. What I truly felt is that I had no choice. I had to. 

There are foods we love. Foods that just satisfy and the flavor is so good. A great steak. A superb cheeseburger. Chips and really great salsa. Franklin's BBQ. I mean, come on. FRANKLIN'S BBQ! When I was in high school I went on my first true backpacking trip into the mountains of Colorado. The whole bit:  backpacking in all our food, eating dehydrated food for a week. When we hiked down back to Durango, we all chatted about what we were going to eat when we got home. We were so hungry for real food. In Durango, we had dinner at a nice restaurant and I had chicken fried steak. To this day that was the BEST chicken fried steak I've ever had. I LOVED that steak. 

There are places we love. Whether it's the ocean or the mountains or the open road or the countryside or even the big city, there are places that bring either a serenity and peace or sometimes an excitement and energy that we just don't get anywhere else. I love exploring new cities. Finding neat restaurants, interesting hotels, fun shops, or learning interesting history of a place, all those things bring joy and adventure to me. I am fortunate in that I have gotten to travel some with my job and I always make it a point to find new places even in cities I visit often. 

The way all these things speak to our hearts is significant. It shows us a glimpse into the Kingdom that will come. The way all of these things thrill us is the way our hearts will be thrilled eternally when that time comes. I believe God gives us these glimpses so that we will latch onto them and use them as "anchors for our souls" (Heb. 6). They are meant to keep us from drifting and loosing our moorings. 

But there is another way these loves should speak to us. In James 4:5 there is a really interesting verse where the brother of Jesus writes: "do you think that the scripture says in vain, 'The Spirit dwelling in us desires to the point of envy?"  The Spirit desires? To the point of envy?  Really?  Do you see God as a God of deep desire?  Yes. Yes He is. And I mean DEEP desire. Deeper that wanting that steak coming off the mountain. Deeper than longing for that upcoming beach trip. And yes, deeper, much deeper, than you "desire" your spouse, or if your single, the desire you may have to have a spouse. It's a deep, longing, envious desire. And what is the object of His desire?

You. 

Naked and Unashamed II

It was all good. I'm mean really. All good. It's the only time in the history of mankind when a man and a woman could say that and it was actually true. It was a time of bliss. A time of total freedom and satisfaction. It was like one of those glorious times with the love of your life that you didn't want to ever end....except....it wasn't going to end!  It was meant to always be this way. 

But then, HE showed up. Like THAT guy that shows up at a roaring party and suddenly the party is over. Like the worst flu you've ever had. But in the summer. Like an all day rain when you were supposed to go to Six Flags. Like the worst canker sore ever. Like a Charley horse in the middle of the night. 

Oh he's much worse than all those things of course but he's like that because he's just oppressive. He just sucks all the wind out of you. But you can't seem to get away from him. But even still, there's something about him. Oh he's a big fat liar. But...that one part...what if he's right?  

"You know, I've been having so much fun and just enjoying life and this beautiful garden that I really hadn't even thought about it. But now that you mention it...", said the woman. And that's all it took. Just a tiny, itsy, bitsy, crack in trust. "I wonder if you're right? I wonder why He told us to not eat THAT fruit?  Oh how silly. We've got all we could possibly desire!  But still...What do you think?" she asked the man. 

The man was either watching ESPN or playing Word Scramble on his phone, but he just kinda shrugged his shoulders. It's not that he didn't care. Of course he cared. But perhaps he didn't realize the severe danger the two of them were in. He didn't realize, and didn't make the effort to find out, the seeds of doubt and distrust that had been planted in the woman. It was still all good as far as he was concerned. 

So now, not only was there that tree, not only was there that sneaky snake, now there is that man who seemed checked out. "Maybe I should go ask Father," she thought. But no, why ask Him? After all, He's the one that's been holding out on us. He's hiding something. It's really not fair. Why doesn't He trust us?  He's treating us like little children. I think that snake is right. We won't die. How silly. We are never going to die. "Come on man, come with me!  I have wonderful delights for you!"

And then it's done. 

"What's happening to us?!" the man says. "What have we done? I'm scared and I have this very strange feeling. We HAVE to hide, right now! Don't look at me like that!  Quick, cover yourself and I'll do the same."

The shame must have been unbearable. They had never felt it before. They had no idea it even existed. It's really impossible to imagine what it was like. The regret. The weeping. The confusion. And from this moment forward, mankind has been in the monumental battle to get back. It's inside all of us. We were created to be there, just as they were. Naked. Fully known. No secrets. No doubts. No shame. That's what we were made for. 

But we are not there, we are here. So we strive and wrestle and bend and contort our psyches to try to get back. But at the same time we are just like the man, scared and fighting an overwhelming feeling to hide. 

We have these two, seemingly opposed deep desires: To truly be known and to truly have no shame as a result. We want so badly to have relationships with people who will really know us and yet we are so afraid of what the result would be if that really happened. So we compensate with all kinds of dysfunctions. We take on addictions to numb the shame. We invent all kinds of personas to hide who we really are. We build huge walls around our esteem, man the parapets with canon and give orders to shoot at anyone that might get too close. "Defend the ego at all costs!," we cry. 

And as a result of our siege upon ourselves, we slowly starve. 

How do we break out?

Naked and Unashamed

When Adam and Eve were in the garden before the Fall, Genesis mentions that they were "naked and not ashamed."  I have named this blog after that amazing reference because I believe this is what all of mankind truly longs for: to be completely known and yet having no fear or shame at that knowing. I would argue that nearly every dysfunction, nearly every sin, every addiction, comes about when we either try to gain this state in ways that do not work or we go for one of the two states (either nakedness or shamelessness) but not the other. Such a person lives an unbalanced life and they will suffer dysfunction.

On this side of eternity this quest may be impossible, but the day will come when all things will be known and shame will be thrown into the fire.

With this blog I hope to become more naked while striving to be rid of all shame.