Category: Uncategorized

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sticky easter.

Posted on by Wick

“Happy Easter Tuesday!!” may not be something you hear today.  But I think you should…at least once.

“my biggest problem starts on Easter Monday (the day after Easter). I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days keeping Lent, pondering what it means, preaching about self-denial, being at least a little gloomy, and then bringing it all to a peak with Holy Week, which in turn climaxes in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday…and then, after a rather odd Holy Saturday, we have a single day of celebration…

..Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all clergy sigh with relief and go on (vacation). It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air?” – NT Wright, “Surprised by Hope”

Well, in our home we’re not cracking open the champagne every morning.  But we do agree – Easter needs to be a bit bigger.  But let’s whisper such a thing to each oEaster-bunny-hiding_for-blogther, lest the marketing campaigns for what we should be buying catch wind of it.  It happens at Christmas every year…pretty much from Thanksgiving until New Years.  Our goal is not to extend Easter in a commercialized way, so that we can be going around buying our Easter ______.  So what can an “Easter Week” look like?

I’ve posted here before that with our family, we try to continue the celebrating of Easter throughout the week.  Some of this is simply the attitude of remembering that “This is Easter Week!”.   Saying things like “Happy Easter Tuesday!” with a giant smile, and thanking God in our prayers for His resurrection and what it has already done in our lives.

Part of our family tradition is to give each person a “day”.  Given a day, it’s their responsibility/privilege to make sure we do something “different” on that day.  Something special that we would love to do, but wouldn’t normally go about doing.  Something that says this week is festive, and we are still celebrating something even more important than Christmas!!!

Obviously there are spiritual aspects to all of this too.  To practice living as Kingdom Citizens especially this week, being those who are quick to love, quick to forgive, and overly merciful in bringing New Creation moments about.  To search and discover the ways ourselves and our families are depending on the provisions of God and His Spirit.  To make changes that reflect we are Easter people!!  But these are the ways we aim to be living all year anyway, right?

Posted in Different Scriptures, Uncategorized

a poem – from John 19:26-27

Posted on by Wick

Jesus, the Holy One, God’s only Son,

It had all been done, but not yet complete.

Not enthroned with the Father, on His mercy seat

But still hanging, what seemed like defeat, blood pumping pain through his body with every beat.

As each breath comes as painful sigh, out of the corner of his eye he sees…Mother.

Not like any other, so much more than a brother, because family had become more.

More than names, and DNA pumping through veins

More than strained awkward moments of gathering at holiday tables

More than Cain and Abel, or filling empty stables

 Because “Family”, Jesus said, shares more than a home – they share God

So even though it seems odd to not give the nod to those who share a name, Mary doesn’t complain

Because she’s come to believe, started to realize and see with new eyes

That God has a pretty big picture in mind, and it doesn’t even stop at human-kind

But for all of creation, the offer of “NEW”

So much bigger than fitting into the hearts of me and you

But not so big that he overlooks the least – the bullied, the voiceless, the powerless and freaks

The orphans and widows, are for whom his heart still beats, and so he reaches out again

In love to a friend

But so much more than a friendly other, a beloved brother, and introduces them for the first time

as Son and mother.

Saying much more than words in one simple introduction, like an induction to a new way of living

a way of giving up what we thought we knew for something capital “T” for True

And upon further review we hear something for us to do too.

 You see our painful lives tend to blur those around, like headphones, shutting out the sound and letting us drown in oceans of self absorption, and having our portion, we’re content to pray for our needs

 But even as he bleeds, the God-man leads us to old ways made new, challenging us to change our view and have hearts transformed, to let go of the norm.

To shed our obsession with self, and see with God’s eyes, and to be surprised by the people and things

Right outside our door, way outside our walls, or maybe. Even. Inside.

 So what happens when we let go of self, and reduce our emphasis on wealth or even health

Because true health won’t come from drugs and regiments to follow,

not having more surgeries or more pills to swallow

And true family doesn’t happen simply by being born

As we look out on a procreating nation, still torn

Truth only comes as we fix our eyes on Christ. And allow the author and perfecter of our lives

To speak His words that cause mountains to move, and holding palms open, having nothing to prove

To the King of All, to follow his way,

and like those who were near heard him say, as he was crucified on that day,

Words that came as a flood of love to obey

And living this way without caution, this situation offered no other option,

than the first Christ-centered adoption.

As new mother and new son saw each other and smiled

They realized they were both actually his child…

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five minute friday: broken

Posted on by Wick

Here we go again with another “Five Minute Friday” post!  To learn more about “Five Minute Friday” (FMF), check out the linked image here.  Basically, each week there’s a word given for you to write about.  You start writing, no back-tracking, editing, etc.  At the end of 5 minutes, you stop.  Then you post it, and share in the community of words that were birthed during these 24-ish hours.  It’s cool stuff.
So here’s this week’s response to the word: “broken”.

I try to help them make sense of it, but I’m limited in my abilities.   There will come a day when the full force of the world’s brokenness is made known to them in a painful way.  A way I never could have prevented.  I try to wrap them in so much of God’s healing movement, that if and when that should ever happen – their very nature is to know how to respond with God.

I forget about it even being an issue, but then something simple happens.  They learn a new word.  One we don’t really say in our home.  As soon as I hear it, I’m reminded – I’m not in control of what they experience in this world.  And this…this is a broken world.  A place where even the people of God are torn to pieces by issues blasted all over social media – during the very week dedicated to celebrating the fact that GOD DIED for us, and experienced the RESURRECTION ahead of all things, becoming our link to New Creation and giving us a place before the throne.

God has begun a movement.  A movement of making our world unbroken.  It’s so much more than Him wanting to burrow a place into our hearts, and making sure we love him more than _______.   It’s about transforming hearts and minds, freeing prisoners and announcing a new way of living has been made possible.  A way that’s changing the cosmos.  The way of new creation.

So for now, I train them one skinned knee (or rug-burned tummy, as it was this week from sliding down a staircase) at a time.  Yes, I’m sorry that hurts – let’s pray together that God would bring comfort.  The pain will change as they grow older.  The response will not.  We will wrap our identity as a family around God bringing healing to our world – so that when the world’s “broken” hits closer to home they have a knee-jerk response of New Creation…