Triumph

Day of Triumph (Simon the Zealot)

They called me a zealot, and even though I am

I’ve found a new way to freedom

He called me to follow him and at first

I was afraid to leave my fight.

But there was a kind of heaven in his call, a hope of glory

So I found him, my hands still stained with vigilante justice, ready to leave it all behind

My brothers riding away into the night

their battles, their fears,their hateful eyes

the scars put there by an empire unjust

whose only goal is to oppress.

These are who I left.

and I joined Jesus despite my reservations, I followed with the end in mind,
waiting for revolution, for freedom and peace

He spoke of days to come and the Word of God

with authority like a man who knew something we’d all missed.

                He preaches about peace and swords and speaks in riddles

Things that can’t be ignored

He challenges those who ask questions,

He angers the officials,

And he worries those in power.
yet he loves the ones with bruises and scars,

The rejected and broken, the unloved and unclean

And I think he loves even me.

So I walked with him into Passover, with tree branches and coats laid out before us

With songs being sung by the children

on the corners of the street

With Hosanna ringing in my own ears

The daughters of Zion and the donkey’s colt

And all of the longings, all of my hopes, all of my fears

Cast aside, watching him triumphantly ride

But amidst that triumph, I saw that sadness in his eyes

The sense of hesitation in every stride we took toward Jerusalem

I thought about that quiet way he said the things he thought
and how none of us knew what he meant

Things about suffering, carrying a cross, going ahead and leaving us behind.

And I remembered the prophesies: setting his face like flint, crying out to the crowds,

The misunderstood man, acquainted with grief.

Still I saw a savior, a hero, a cause not to abandon.

Then He’d used the word crucified.

And a sensation of dread crept into my heart

Because I wondered if maybe I’d been wrong

And I’d followed him, only to watch him die.
and then where would I be? Where would any of us be,

Except running away again, afraid for our lives?
I had been waiting for him to show his power
to start a fire

That would ignite the whole nation to stand up and fight

He would redeem us from this murky world of injustice and lies

And then all of the battles I’d fought, even ones that had been lost

Would be worth it, would prove to the world my zeal had not been in vain.

He threw over their tables in the temple

And shouted about his father’s house

Those gentle hands turned violent against those I’d once hated

We stood with him while he whipped the vendors

And cast their money to the ground
Watching from the distance, the priests and authorities

The religious ones amidst the tax collectors and sinners

And Jesus, purging the temple of everything unclean
I surveyed the scene: my brothers, the Pharisees, and the vendors on the run

And that look in the Master’s face, his eyes burning, his face like flint there in Jerusalem

Inside I laughed.

The revolution had begun

Holy Week

When I was a kid, we had a closet where we kept most of our toys. With four kids, you can imagine that it might have gotten a little cluttered over time. We'd just shove whatever toy hadn't been cleaned up in there, close teh door and forget about them. Over time it would begin to overflow, full of notebooks, crayons, things laid sideways and upside down and perched on the edges of the shelves, things on the floor, misplaced train tracks and game pieces that never made it back to their boxes, dolls and clothes, and thousands of other things that maybe didn't even belong in the closet.
Mom was finally declare ENOUGH, and we'd spend a day organizing. I loved days when we did that. I would run all over the house putting things back in their proper places. We'd stack up the game boxes with all of their pieces back in place. We'd put the little people all together, the matchbox cars back in their buckets, the crayons in the desk, the books on the shelves. Everything went back into place, and if it didn't have a place, it went in the giveaway pile. Sometimes we'd unearth something that had been missing for months. Sometimes we'd find nasty things at the bottom of a pile and pitch them. At the end of the process, we'd have a newly organized, tidy toy closet. Something I always found so refreshing and wonderful.
This week is "Holy Week", in which we remember the last week of Jesus' life on earth. I'm not from a litergical church so we don't do lent, but this year I decided that my life has become like a cluttered toy closet, storing up things that don't need to be there, disorganized, full of trash and misplaced articles. So I thought I'd take holy week to reflect and see what things I should take out, put in their places, and sort. I'm fasting from entertainment as a reminder, and as a way to renew my mind. Our culture is full of things that are fine in small doses and lethal in large doses. And I've been discovering how much of my life is sucked away by things like facebook and TV shows and movies and music, and how many of my thoughts are directed toward those things. Again, fine in small doses, but with too many, they clutter out the things I claim are the most important. So this week, I will be writing and reflecting and reading a lot, and hopefully not sitting around zoning out. I want to be intentional about my relationship with God and my family, not just shoving it into the closet with all of the other things in my life and hoping it stays on the shelf where it's supposed to be. I want to find all of the misplaced items that don't belong in my life and get rid of them. I want to pick up the things that have fallen off of the shelves and place them where they belong. ANd I hope at the end of the week I'll have found a better balance. I hope that God refines me and uses the time to teach me things I need to know.
So here goes. Maybe you'd like to join me in focusing more on Christ this week leading up to Easter. If not, maybe you'd be willing to pray for me and my heart, that I can "be transformed by the renewing of [my] mind" and "redeem the time, because the days are evil."

Christians Don't Talk About Money Enough

When it comes to personal finances, I have opinions that probably make people mad. I'm probably judgmental about it and I probably just need to stop worrying about it. But today while I was thinking about another acquaintance of mine who I think has gotten in over her head with debt, and who spends money on things she doesn't have money for (who doesn't read this blog so don't go imagining this is all about you), I just got annoyed all over again. Why does "society" insist that it's OK to spend money you don't have?
Some days it seems like almost everyone around me doesn't realize that our country is on a sinking financial ship full of inflated money that isn't backed up by anything but empty promises from capitol hill.
And some of the problem has come from the whole LIE that you can spend money you don't have.That you have to keep up with what everyone around you has.
What I'm thinking about today is the taboo involving money. We don't talk about it. You might say, "We're having some struggles". Or "We're pretty situated". But people don't really share numbers. Like how much in debt you are, or what your salary is, or what percent of your income you give away. And maybe that's OK. But maybe it's created a whole culture full of people who are willing to take more risks than they should. Maybe if they knew they were going to have to talk about it, they wouldn't want to spend unwisely.
Or maybe it's the opposite way. Maybe people don't talk about it, because in general, we know that it will expose our foolishness, our selfishness, our lives that are not fully in alignment with God's word.
I know that you don't want to sound like you're bragging, or make anyone feel bad because you make more money than them. And I know it isn't socially acceptable. But Christians aren't really socially acceptable, and I think maybe they should be called out on some of their spending. 
I attend a very affluent church. They are very generous too. But my heart kind of breaks when I see couples trying to "keep up" with the the Christian Jonses around them when they honestly can't afford to. I wonder what would be different if we just knew upfront what kind of income a person made. If that guy who lives in the 300,000 home made triple digits it wouldn't seem as foolish for him to spend that much on his home. And if the person who is just barely getting by lives in a mobile home, maybe the church would have more compassion on them rather than making them feel inadequate with all of its collective wealth.
I know it's an ideal, and it probably wouldn't work out that great. I know that the class structure in America and social norms make things like this impossible. I just wish that it weren't such a taboo subject. Everyone hates dealing with it, everyone is burdened by their money and how to spend it wisely, so why not just share the burden with each other? I think we could gain a lot of wisdom from each other and be very encouraged by having some accountability. I'd share with you if you asked.

The Best Days

There have been a few days in my life which I would call pretty much perfect. When I look back on them, all I think about was how good of a day it was. A perfect kind of experience that's written in the memory just like that--with every detail painted there in pretty colors and sounds.
There are a lot of them from when I was a kid. Once my brothers and I spent the whole day mucking out the old chicken coop and turning it into our own personal fort. We worked so hard. We found a can of orange spray paint and made our own signs. And we cleaned and prepared. When we finally went up to have supper, we were so hungry. I think it was the best meal my mom ever made. It was a great day, because we'd spent it together, doing something without arguing.
Another day I remember was in the summer, the dog days. During the drought of 87. Mom let us play outside in our cattle tank turned swimming pool all day. We had popcicles and ran around like wild chickens doing things kids do, screaming and playing make believe and making up dumb games to play in the water. When I changed my clothes that afternoon, I imagined that this must have been what camp was like. That night Mom decided it was too hot to sleep in our un-airconditioned bedrooms, so we slept with blankets and pillows in the sectioned off living room with the window unit keeping us cool. The smell of freon and the quiet rumbling of the fan with the crickets and cicadas outside lulled me to sleep, and I still think of that day on the long summer nights I have.
Yesterday I drove by the sign to Indian Creek Park and I remembered this amazing day. I don't know what made it so great. We had a family picnic on Memorial Day, my family and Daniel's family. The end of my junior year of high school, just hanging out at a secluded park with some of my favorite people.
That day Daniel's dad told me that they'd decided that Daniel would leave for college in the fall instead of graduating like normal people. It was because he'd decided he wanted to marry me so he wanted to get a jump start on things.
We hiked through the woods. Daniel's oldest brother was engaged then, and his fiancee was with us, along with the next oldest and the next youngest. We ate food from the fire and spent the day laughing and hanging out. It was a most ordinary day, and yet it was a most perfect day.
Another perfect day was a canoe trip I took with my brother and his friends when I was fifteen. We started the day laughing. We ate together at the K-Mart diner, and then we drove up to the river and canoed all day. When we finished we did a little caving and then we drove home, cleaned up, and went to see a movie together. Everything fell into place. The company was great. The weather was great. It was just a great day. A perfect kind of day.
When I look back, the monumental days, in which big things happened, those huge memories like having a baby or graduating... those days are different than these perfectly perfect days. They're special and they're memorable, but the best of days seem to end up being strangely normal.
On Tuesday we had another snow storm. We got about 8 inches of snow overnight. My husband was out of town for work, so I spent it home with the kids, playing games and reading books. They played outside, and I did some shoveling. We watched a movie together and had supper and when I put them to bed, I realized that it had been another one of those Best Days. The kind that pass in such a normal way, but when you look back, you see how everything just fell into place. And it was beautiful.
I wish I could freeze time sometimes, make these girls stay little and wonderful and innocent forever. But I can't. So, since I can't, I just have to keep these memories, store up the best days. And hopefully they'll have a few that they look back on and think about how amazing they were, just being kids, enjoying the simplicity of everyday perfect.