These are not the thoughts we run to embrace. Pain and suffering. This song, these words, brought me up short this week as Pandora played and I edited. I stopped immediately and let these words of Lauren Daigle’s song wash over me and soothe my soul. “Lay it down…Oh Lord, I lay it down.” How perfectly appropriate to sit in these thoughts of surrender this week as Jesus walked steadfastly, unwavering to his cross.

This favored Son, who could multiply fish and loaves to feed thousands, who could quiet the storm with a word, who could open the eyes of the blind with a touch, and who could bring life back to a child with a prayer, could have certainly walked away from unnecessary pain and suffering. But that is the problem, I think. The pain was necessary. It was the only reality, the only solution.

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I think many of you know I have been writing a book for the last 4 years. I began in January of the year 2020. You know that year. You know the year our world seemed to turn upside down and inside out. We were separated and isolated and our plans, so hopefully planned, were dashed to the ground while we waited and waited…

I sit at the same desk this morning I sat at then. The first three months of that year I faithfully started reading a chronological New Testament Bible, stepping into discovering Jesus anew. My neighbor Hannah and I had multiple engagements scheduled to share The Loving Father Project, songs from her album about God the Father's love interlaced with stories from my book Genesis. Of course, by the end of April, all gatherings had been canceled. Including all in-person services of the church my husband and I belonged to as members.

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I am waiting these days. But I am not sitting quietly, hands folded in my lap, feet firmly placed on the floor. It is tempting since my calendar appears to be relatively empty day after day after day – interrupted with prayer penciled in on Tuesdays, Mary Hall Freedom Village on Fridays, and church on Sundays. Perhaps that doesn't sound empty – but for me, it stretches out like a calm reflective sea. But it is an illusion.

Because the plumbers are here in Greenville in both bathrooms and the water is off and rumor has it they will return again next week when the replacement diverter for the 70-year-old plumbing arrives. The front yard is carpeted in their wheat straw and hopeful grass seeds from replacing piping for the gray water the week before. They did things differently in the 1950s out in the country. Old houses have old problems, and we mean to solve many of them in this quiet month of August.

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Six days before the Passover, Jesus, therefore, came to Bethany where Lazarus was…

John gives us everything we need to know in this introduction to the dinner. I imagine the invitation was engraved on heavy cream-colored stationary with a classic yet elegant script in gold. The date; six days before Passover. The next day they will be guiding the donkey through the streets of Jerusalem paved with cloaks and palm branches to the shouts of “Hosanna!” But tonight, it is a quiet affair in Bethany at the home of their friend Simon the leper (obviously it goes without saying he has been healed of his skin disease). There they all are, reclining at the table, a feast of celebration spread out before them. They have great reason to celebrate; Lazarus, once dead, is now very much alive!

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The closer we get to Jerusalem, the more we don’t like the stories. They don’t line up neat and clean into easy sweet little homilies. The stories Jesus tells are messy. The people we think easily fit through the door into heaven are turning and walking away. Those people we love to hate are having Jesus over for dinner. I had planned on sharing with you the wonderful story of Mary of Bethany today, but that will need to wait for next week. Because today an enthusiastic woman who really wants to get it right described humility as being equal with everyone else. So, instead, I have to tell this story of being completely unequal. Because that is who our God is.

If you are reading these stories leading up to our version of Easter, you may be here. Matthew, Mark, and Luke overlap the telling of these stories unfolding these final days as they walk closer and closer to their destination. Luke will tell us the story of stopping to dine with the tax collector Zacchaeus; Matthew will retell Jesus describing the kingdom of heaven and comparing it to the unfair payment of laborers in the field. Mark will tell us neither. Matthew and Mark will tell of James and John asking to sit on his left and on his right in his coming kingdom. They all three will tell of Jesus warning them of his coming death (and resurrection!). All three will tell of blind Bartimaeus receiving his sight – although Luke has him as they enter the city; Matthew and Mark as they leave. Their stories soon converge as they enter the gates of Jerusalem. Every story; every conversation will hold a heavier weight. We need to pay close attention.

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Let us sing the song of Zachariah. Zachariah, old and doubting, his tongue tied so he could not speak. You know this story, don’t you? It is as much a Christmas story as the coming babe in the manger. Read the whole first chapter of Luke, and there you find him, the first one to encounter Gabriel and his good news. His response? Zachariah didn’t just doubt – he challenged God’s own messenger.

He had known his share of heartbreak and disappointment. A priest of the line of Levi awaiting a long life to serve, yet the dice had never rolled his way. His wife, whom he loved, remained childless, their house silent of the laughter of child’s play. And once the miracle had appeared at his doorstep, he doubted God’s goodness, he questioned the angel’s message.

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It is December. Everyone is preparing for Bethlehem. Lights hung. Trees decorated. Carols in the air. But I am on the eastern shore of the Jordan. Waiting to go into Jerusalem.

This has been a long and slow journey traveling with Jesus. I started it in the new year before the great pestilence. I never imagined it would take as long to write his story as it did for him to live out the three years of his ministry.

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Burning persimmon red stretched across the horizon dividing midnight blue sea from sky. Morning had spoken; she was on her way. There would be no stopping her light. I turned to the right, the ocean waves breaking to my left, the sand cold against the soles of my feet. Ahead of me, where man is not allowed to build, sand dunes rolled far into the distance. One lone fishing pole stood silhouetted against the retreating night.

I was surprised as I got closer to find the fishing pole belonged to a woman and her young daughter. Sitting on a handwoven blanket, cozy in hooded jackets; socks with their Birkenstock sandals, the mother’s arms encircled her daughter as they waited for the rising of the sun.

“You have the best seat in the house,” I greeted her. “We do,” she agreed.

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In his world, it had been almost a week. A week since their feet walked that holy road toward the holy town of Jerusalem. Of course, they didn’t know it, but every step they walked with him was holy ground. Holy dust stirred and settled on the feet of this Holy God, wholly man. Jesus.

Their first stop, (within almost spitting distance from the holy gates) was Bethany. There was a feast; a banquet in honor of Jesus with Lazarus by his side. This Lazarus, who had laid still and breathless inside the tomb for three days quietly silently lifelessly waiting for Jesus to arrive and call his name and invite him back to life.

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My house is in that momentary quiet lull that comes before the flurry of Christmas. We are already late with our preparations, and I don’t know how we ended up here just days before Christmas Eve without a present wrapped or a decoration hung. Jeff is hanging wallpaper on the ceiling of the dining room (yes, I know…) and waiting for the aqua and turquoise chandelier to arrive… shoot, I hope he has ordered it… and I am chopping vegetables for soup and baking chicken pot pies – not exactly Christmas oriented activities.

But this coming Saturday the children arrive to bake my sister’s sugar cookies and ice them with the greatest combination of colors and there will be gifts piled under the tree which doesn’t exist yet. So, I better get busy. But for just one more moment I want to wait in the quiet. The sky is starting to turn pink outside my window, day will be arriving soon.

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The church where I belong has a very active Women’s Ministry. It has been exciting for me to be embraced by all these women, the circle growing each time I attend a new event or show up for weekly prayer together. Recently I encountered a whole new thing. These women not only reach out to wrap their arms around one another, but they also reach out to other women. The ones outside the circle.

Yesterday I heard some of their stories. The woman just out of jail since last week. The woman who declared she was told her whole life that she was unlovable - only to experience now being loved deeply by God. The woman who shared the photograph taken on her wedding day, after coming out of a ten-year spiral of heroin and homelessness. The woman who begged another to sing for her and sobbed with her head down as she sang the loving words of the Savior.

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We tiptoe around each other these days, careful not to offend. I have found myself stumbling into a land mine more than once over the past year or two. Those encounters have left me cautious, taking a step back from others I once held close, trying to calculate what is safe conversation and what is likely to be met with a sharp retort. “Sorry,” I think in surprise, pulled up short.

A new friend of mine prayed from across the room recently, “Lord, do not let me be easily offended!” Ah, I thought. There we have it. If we follow that God-man Jesus, we must not be easily offended. We must be filled with love and gentleness and self-control, not pride that is easily offended. Easily wounded. Fragile on our own little pedestals.

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It is a story you may know well. I thought I did. It is about a paralyzed man’s sins being forgiven. But it is also about the love and the faith of his friends. These men cared so much, they believed so much that no obstacle would prevent them from carrying their friend into the healing arms of Jesus. Am I that determined, that passionate about the life of my friends?

Thursday morning I listened as Toria Peterson taught this scripture of the paralyzed man lowered through the ceiling tiles, hoping for a miracle. It is an important story, showing up not only in Luke but also in the Gospels of Matthew (9:1-8) and Mark (2:1-12). I am in the process of writing the story of Jesus and I had written about this exact passage last spring. I posted that writing in March of this year, but I had missed something. I missed the faith of the friends!

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I am walking on the beach at Tybee Island with my husband, teenage son, and daughter. It is August 2007. We are waiting for sunset this late Saturday afternoon. I am listening intently on the phone as my sister's best friend Carol quotes this scripture passage. She is telling me that my sister, who has been throwing up for three days as her body rejects the nutrients she has been receiving through a catheter during this last-ditch effort to prolong her life for just a few more months, has claimed this scripture as her comfort.

First, let me tell you, I am not the person who talks on the phone when I am with other people. I pour all my attention into the people I am with. But this was a major exception. My sister was Jewish. My sister was dying. And now, in the space of four days, my mother, and now Kathy’s best friend both were telling me that Kathy had accepted Jesus as her Savior.

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There was something God always wanted to make clear; He created us for a great and wonderful purpose. He breathed the air into our lungs and gave us life. Precious and valuable, each person is made in the image of God. It is too amazing to comprehend.

As I study the life of Jesus, I am reminded that the world Jesus entered into was very different from our world today. He was born into a very Jewish world. Yeah, the enemy walked their streets dressed in the power and might of Rome, but the dirt they stood on was a promised land filled with the Jewish people and their Jewish customs and their Jewish law, and their Temple and their God. There was no forgetting that.

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They were offended. And they had every reason to be. He was arrogant and blasphemous, claiming the Holy things of God as his own. And they didn’t even know the half of it. Yeah, they knew about what he was teaching the crowds in the Temple, (of all places!), but they didn’t have a clue about what he had said to that woman by Jacob’s well. And they would have been even more appalled that he had been talking to her in the first place.

Jesus was a problem. He was offensive. He was teaching without their authority. Worse, he seemed to know things they didn’t know – and they were the experts. The elite. The educated. The sanctified. And they alone knew how to balance this tight rope walk with the Romans. Jesus was not only a problem, but he could also prove to be dangerous if the crowds took it upon themselves to think he was something more than a common Jewish teacher.

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If the world wants to hate us, this should be the reason;

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken. Isaiah 25:8 ESV

This should be the offensive heart of the problem.

We believe this,

we believe this is true.

We believe God is a Truth-Giver and a Promise Keeper.

A Man of His Word, you might say.

He told His beloved Chosen People,

and they wrote it down through the Prophet voice of Isaiah

that there would come a day on the mountain of Jerusalem

when death would be swallowed up forever.

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The girl child sat in my lap as I flipped through the children’s book of bible stories to the telling of Passover. She was excited because she and her family had attended Passover Seder on Saturday night at a friend’s house and she had been given the privilege of perhaps finding the “afikoman.” It has hard to get the exact details from her. She is three. That should be enough explanation.

I grew up in a Christian home so our traditions were more of the egg hiding kind than the traditional matzo hiding kind but I knew what she was talking about.

When my kids were little, my daughter wanted us to celebrate Passover, so my Jewish business partner graciously invited us to join her family. Before that, I had celebrated a Passover meal lead by Murray Tilles. His ministry, Light of Messiah, connects Jewish people to Jesus and Christians to their Jewish roots – so that is where I had first encountered a true Seder.

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