I stand here next to Jesus and my circumstances taunt my faith like that soldier who came to take my Lord away.
So I lash out with my sword, my anger flaring. I fight what God has brought to me in this garden of life.
In seasons past I have wondered how Peter’s faith could have fallen so far, so fast. But I understand it better today.
I’m failing like Peter, denying my connection to and trust in Christ by allowing my emotions to rule me.
My anger pushes away the people I love, and the days are wearing me thin like an old piece of cloth that has been stretched too far and used for too long.
I’ve expected God to DO something, not something specific, but certainly something magnificent. I thought I saw it coming, I have imagined what it could look like, but it has never fully materialized.
And now I am weary with the waiting. My fleshly, human heart is unwilling to do what He has asked of me: to accept this apparent nothingness, this silence from heaven, as God’s plan.
Unlike Peter, I know that God births life out of death. Even so, I stumble and bow low under the weight of my scattered dreams.
But if I could embrace the here and the now, then I could be like the women who faced death bravely and joyfully found the One they sought, gloriously risen.
If I will only pack my supplies to go to Him, to care for His body, and serve Him in death, I might see the stone rolled away and hear His own voice call my name.
Deliverance comes from one place alone; it rises from the darkness of a tomb.
A few more days and we will celebrate Good Friday. The day that Christians celebrate the crucifixion of the Son of God. What kind of strange faith calls the death of its Savior good?
Only a brilliant, humble faith could believe in a God who would eat death like that, consuming it for the sake of a mess of people like us, and then destroy it from the inside out.
God is good and holy, and I am Peter; I am Mary; I am a woman full of failure and fear.
My holy God is not surprised at my lack. He has risen so that I, too, can rise with Him. On this truth I set my hope.
Christmas is a lullaby about how God bent low to be with us. Easter is a symphony declaring that we can rise to be with God.
Holy, holy to the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!
These circumstances may press hard on my soul, like darkness rising around me. But my heart refuses to reject God’s hand, even when it holds what I may never understand.
I kneel in holy reverence, planting seeds of faith in this cold, dim heart of mine on this very Good Tuesday.
When they sprout and grow, I will rise from my knees, stand in the shade of His miraculous grace, and everyone around me will know that God has done it all.
