The Week Before Easter

Easter is coming. It's late this year, but it's finally on its way.  It feels like we've been waiting a long time.

I need Easter, especially in the spring. I'm running on fumes in the spring, depleted by my own commitments and self-focus. The days come fast and furious, one event after another after another, the calendar an unrelenting taskmaster. Rest and reflection are elusive. I have to fight for them. Holy, transcendent thoughts are suppressed by those that seem more urgent: I must figure out this new computer. Who will drive to the track meet Saturday? Do we have enough bread for sandwiches? Can she possibly get a good enough scholarship to afford that college she dreams of?

But Easter's coming, and I want to be ready for it. I force my thoughts in a different direction. I wake up each day to a devotional full of scripture, art, music, poetry, and meaningful reflections that lift my thoughts upward. (It's from Biola University's Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts, and it's worth checking out.) As it's still winter in Colorado, I bundle up and walk circles around my track, trying to do the nearly impossible work of shutting out the calendar's demands to focus my mind on Christ and Christ alone.

I am transfixed by something I read a few days ago. Anglican pastor and famed writer John Stott told of visiting a temple in Asia and encountering a "placid, remote-looking Buddha statue." We've all seen them and instantly recognize the fat belly, the closed eyes, and the slightly smug expression. Stott's mind immediately turned instead "to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. This is the God for me!" This is the God of Easter.

My girls and I recently saw The Thorn in Denver. Although it was my fourth time, every show is a little different, and this one had an addition that caught me by surprise. As the man playing Jesus hung on the cross, the stage was completely silent. No one moved or spoke. And for one long minute, all we heard was painful, terrible gasping from the man on the cross. His whole body shook as the guttural, horrific sounds escaped from his chest. It was almost unbearable, even as I knew this man would get down and celebrate at a cast party an hour later.

This is the God for me. The one who knows what it's like to be human, who knows rejection, suffering, and death. The one who understands my distracted, undisciplined thinking, my forgetfulness and faithlessness, my continual temptation toward sin, and loves me anyway. Help me lean in, Jesus, to those unforced rhythms of grace (Matt. 11:29-30, MSG) that run so contrary to my world and my cluttery mind.

I'm ready for Easter.