An Incredible Moment on the Water

Hang with me here...

I spent all day yesterday doing very little. I was in desperate need of rest. REAL rest. Long, napping, contemplative rest. Little Gracie and I hauled out pillows and a comforter and spent almost the entire day on the sofa in the living room. In between long naps and sleepy sessions, I would go to the computer and write. I needed to begin work on my project for Holy Week.

My church decided to have me write a meditative narrative much like the ones we have been reading in Gire's book for the different stations of the cross. Come Holy Week, the church will be open on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for people to tour through different rooms of the church and meditate on the different Stations of the Cross. As they enter each room, my writing for that station will be handed to them to read as they gaze on artwork of all types to inspire them to better understand what the crucifixion and resurrection are all about.

Yesterday, I wrote the first six stations and had the last four to go. Each one became harder and harder for me to put into words as my spirit grew darker and darker as I delved into what each marker meant. Why it happened. How we could relate to it. By early evening, I was spent - mentally and emotionally. I got to the point where Jesus was crucified and I hit a block. I couldn't go on.

I went to bed last night and dreamed that I was standing in my backyard during an unusually warm, wet snow when a huge tree began to melt and collapse. The top fell into the middle and that collapsed the middle down to the bottom and then the entire tree fell over - taking the tree next to it with it as it fell. Because of the snow, the trees slid across the yard in different directions - taking out pieces of fence and landing in different neighbors' yards. The odd thing was, after they fell to the ground, they were five times larger than when they had been standing upright. The circumference of each tree was probably twenty feet across. I was thankful no one was hurt in the dream (because they landed very close to my neighbors' homes) but woke up wondering what in the world it all meant.

I went online to my favorite dream interpretation website and saw that trees falling usually meant that you were looking at something in the wrong way or taking the wrong route in your life. I couldn't help but think that it had to do with the writing I had done on the Stations of the Cross and I was so upset. All I could think of was that I was too new to be doing this - that I don't really "get" the crucifixion and the resurrection enough to be explaining it to a church full of people who are seeking God to come into their lives. I began having all sorts of doubt and fears creep in. Ths morning, I almost trashed everything I had written yesterday - but something stopped me.

I took a shower, got dressed and headed off to church. I sat down in my usual aisle and because the weather was kind of crappy, attendance was light so I had the whole row to myself. Right in front of me sat one of the associate pastors and his family and when Pastor Rick, the senior pastor noticed them, he came over to say hello. I barely noticed though because I had taken out the notebook I had started carrying with me at the beginning of Lent and I was writing at the speed of light. The moment I sat down, it all came flooding out to me. While they all talked and chit-chatted, I was writing furiously about what each station's main emotion was - some I had gotten right but two of them - I now knew I had been looking at them all wrong. (There were my two trees.)

Where I had gotten stuck the night before was on the station where Jesus actually dies on the cross, then where he is layed in the tomb and finally, where the resurrection is discovered. I got to that point and my mind had gotten stuck back on his beating, his betrayal and his denegration. I was looking at the last three knowing that the emotion that matched the last one would be joy but what about the other two? How was I going to make people understand what his actual death and his actual burial was about? How was I going to connect them so they felt it? Understood it? Made the connection?

There, sitting in that seat at church, it came to me. The station where he dies on the cross is about grief - I needed to make people relive grief so they could understand that once Jesus was dead, it was about what the others were left to experience - not him. And the station where he was layed in the tomb and left for dead? I still wasn't sure... Until I came home and read this chapter.

Gire writes, "Why the withdrawal? To wean the disciple from sight to faith. To force them to rely less on their physical eyes and more on their spiritual ones. If they were ever to walk by faith, Jesus had to withdraw from their sight."

OH. MY. GOD.

There are moments in the past year where things have suddenly become clear to me where before I had just gone off faith. I didn't "get" something - a story, a parable, a bible verse - but I decided this time around not to look for holes in the stories to break down my faith but to look in faith and know that God would find a way to show me what he meant by the things I did not understand. Several times he has done just that. But today - well, this one was HUGE.

I never really understood why Jesus had to die. I never really got the whole "miracle" of it. And why was he gone three days? Why not instantly come back to life? Why didn't God let them spear him on the cross and then have him wake up and say "made ya look!"

Because...he had to be out of their sight. They had to go by faith that this was not the end. They had to grieve for his death before his life could take on its true and final meaning. The others needed time...time to process the loss and to do their grieving and right as it all got rolling - when the shock of his death had had time to be fully processed - there it was -

the empty tomb.

And the resurrection? It happened so we'd all know that it is possible to overcome death. If none of them had ever seen him after his death with the holes in his hands and feet and eating bread with them to prove he was alive again - it would have all been a tragic story instead of a never-ending miracle. He had to die to pay for our sins but he had to be resurrected so we would understand the miracle of what God had planned for all of us.

He taught the disciples to walk by faith in this story...but He taught me the meaning of the word faith. The writing I did - the story of Jesus' death - the dream about the trees - this chapter in the book - all fitting together like some wonderous puzzle. Here I am, for the first time, seeing all the pieces in place and getting what it is really all about.

He is one magnificent God.