It’s gloomy out today...a little cold and overcast, but I know Sunday is coming. The forecast is sunny and a high of 79 degrees! I’m looking forward to having that light and heat kiss my face (but not for too long, because I’m terrified of sun damage).
Today is a serious day. I woke up feeling the weight of it. My eyes get teary when I try to grasp what this day must have been for the ones that saw our Lord give himself over to suffer and die.
I’ve been working while sitting outside on the porch all morning (in a sweater with a hood, a blanket and cranked up space heater), with the budding trees and singing birds as my company. As I go through my to do list, I’m alternating my soundtrack between the Portuguese version of “Come Back to Life” that I’m learning and the soundtrack to the most recent movie version of “Jane Eyre.” (Thank you Dario Marianella for the beauty you put in the world (click to listen). Also, I experienced this completely joyful moment when at one point a little birdie was singing a perfect counter melody to the orchestra.)
The music is so haunting and emotional. It matches the mood of the trees reaching their leafs towards the sky in hopes that the winter is over. It’s been SUCH a cold winter, and I’m in TN, I know it’s been harder on so many more people than it has on me. But I am worn out from everything being brown, stripped and dead. I’m tired of being encumbered by a gazillion layers and I just want to be free! I want to walk down the stairs in the morning without my boots on my feet and a shiver all over...you get the picture.
But like I said, hope is on the way! Forecast is looking great and I’m looking forward to Sunday...a spring dress and A CELEBRATION OF LIFE!
And it makes me smile when I think about how the winter in our souls and hearts can be over forever….a perpetual Spring, always budding, always reaching up in hope, always believing that the season of death IS OVER!
But it’s our choice. We choose it moment by moment, step by step.
Here’s some steps you should think about:
If you haven’t gone to church in a while, you should go. You should. Whether you’ve never been, or you’re just “over it,” you should go and hear the truth of the ultimate victory in the history of all time. If you haven’t prayed in a while, you should speak to God. He hasn’t forgotten about you. If you haven’t reached out to someone you need to forgive, DO IT. Don’t waste precious time. If you haven’t told anyone about your struggle with depression and hopelessness, don’t wait any longer. You don’t have to be alone. If you haven’t met your Savior yet, it’s past time for you to come home.
Choose life.
Deuteronomy 30:19-20 “I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. And love God, your God, listening obediently to him, firmly embracing him. Oh yes, he is life itself, a long life settled on the soil that God, your God, promised to give your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
And because of Christ, we are among those ancestors that can inherit eternal life. We can grow in the soil of His grace and mercy and PEACE.
Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
Be at peace, and be healed.
Happy Easter!! We can all Come Back to Life!