My Favorite Holiday - The Day In-Between

Here is a video I found that sort of illustrates a little bit of what I feel about Good Friday.





Today is Saturday, the day in-between the two days that we celebrate for Easter. I like to include this day in my celebration. The bible doesn't talk about what happened today. Today, Jesus is still in the grave and we have a sense of anticipation for something more as we look forward to tomorrow. Unfortunately, I don't think the disciples felt that. I think they woke up the next morning hoping it was all a dream. And realizing that it wasn't, that they really had lost the one they called "The Christ", I'm sure brought great despair to their hearts. I can't begin to imagine what this day was like for them.

The reason I like to dwell on the fact that today Jesus was still dead, is that #1 it reminds me again of the great price Christ paid for me. Because he very well could have died on the cross and chilled in his tomb for a couple of hours and rose again. Now it's a little more convincing to be dead for a couple days and then raise again, but I wonder if he wanted us to feel and experience this day. To take a day and reflect again on what happened yesterday. The most monumental event that has ever occurred and will ever occur happened yesterday. And he did it for me. I wonder if he gave us a day to let that soak in a little bit.

Let me put it this way. If Eddie took a bullet for me and died, that would hit me real hard. It would be a very sober thing to think about the loss of a life in exchange for my life. Not only would there be pain for the loss of his life because he is dear to me, but to know that he gave his life in order that I might live, well, I just don't know how I would process through that. And the next morning when I woke up and he wasn't there, all the emotion of the previous day would come flooding back in. And I would recognize the gravity of what occurred the day before.

The second reason I like to dwell on the fact that today Jesus was still in the grave, is because it makes tomorrow all the more greater to experience.

My Favorite Holiday - Good Friday

Easter is undoubtedly my favorite holiday. And when I say "Easter", I really mean the whole weekend that we remember starting from Christ's crucifixion on Friday through his resurrection on Sunday.

Today is Good Friday. All day I have been reading verses and prayers that people have posted on Facebook and Twitter. I looked at some pictures on boston.com of people around celebrating Holy Week. I've read blogs with reflections on what this day means. Today through Sunday is probably the most spiritually significant and saturated weekend of the year.

But with all of the public significance of this holiday, I want to make sure that I am letting it be personally significant. I want to make sure that it touches my soul. I want to make sure that when I go to the Good Friday service tonight that it isn't just another "church service".

Today is a remembrance of a dark day and a dark event. The death of Christ was so significant that the earth darkened, the temple shook, and even graves were opened and people who were once dead rose and walked around. The impact on the spiritual realm we may never fully understand until heaven. The moment Christ breathed his last and exclaimed that "it was finished" was the pinnacle moment of all history and it bought the souls of billions.

But more specifically it bought my soul. When Christ cried "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I no longer bore my own sin, but it was Christ who bore it.

I can't watch "The Passion of the Christ" without crying... and I never want to. I want the death of Jesus Christ to bring me to tears. When I watch the depiction of Christ being beaten and ripped to shreds, I want it to grip my soul. I want to mourn over the atrocity that occurred. If I am ever not moved by the death of Christ, I should repent of not seeing the gravity of it as I should.

Today, my Savior died. And when that day was over, the disciples still felt the pain of loss. And yes, it is a Good Friday because of what today brings, but the fullness of it's goodness has not yet been celebrated or remembered. Today, someone died in order to bring me life. And yes I can rejoice because life was given, but it came at a heavy price, the death of an eternal other by the worst means possible. And that heavy price should weigh on my heart today as I remember the death of my Savior.

The Hidden Reason of Action - Part 2

Let me first start by saying, not every action has a deeper, hidden reason. Obviously when I go get a drink of water, there isn't a deep reason seeded within my heart that is creating the desire for water. And even a lot of complex decisions we make don't spring from a hidden reason. But I know for me, I do have a significant amount of choices that come from deeper reasons, most of the time from fears.

Secondly, I would like to say, that I am only speaking from personal experience. I don't know the intricacies of everyones heart and I have no idea what you have been through in your life. But I do know that "the purpose in a man's heart is like deep water" (Proverbs 20:5) And I know that most of the time I don't really understand what's going on in my heart. So these thoughts are only coming from my experience and the wisdom that I have gained from older, wiser sisters.

Usually the way I can tell if there is something deeper going on than the surface answer I am giving, is that the decision or circumstance is stirring a lot of emotion within me (i.e. anger, sadness, fear, etc). And recognizing what that emotion is where I need to start in order to figure out what the root reason is. Once I have acknowledged the emotion I can then ask myself questions to burrow down into the depths of my heart. Let's take the example of our Star Trek Voyager friend B'Elanna.

If I was in B'Elanna's shoes and I recognized that I was getting very emotional about my daughter being part Klingon, I would sit down with the Lord and first ask the Lord to reveal to me the true intentions of my heart. Then I would start asking myself and God these kinds of questions:
~ "God, what's the big deal? Why do I want my daughter to not be a Klingon?"
      - Because I don't want her to experience what I experienced as a child.
~ "What did I experience as a child?"
      - Other kids made fun of me and my father left me and my mother.
~ "Am I afraid that the same thing will happen to her?"
      - Yes
~ "Am I afraid that if she is a Klingon, Tom will leave just like my father left?"
      - Yes (at this point I would probably be in tears, which is a good sign that I have hit a sensitive nerve which is probably the root issue).

Now obviously these questions got right down to the point because I knew what the real issue was in this example. But this shows the kind of process that I need to take in order to get down to the real reason that is driving what I am doing. Sometimes this process can take a lot of time and a lot of prayer and sometimes it takes only a few moments; every time is different.

But it's only when I take the time to process through things like this that I can find victory and my actions and emotions can change. Otherwise I remain ignorant of the state of my heart and continue to respond to situations from a heart that is not trusting in the Lord but is responding out of fear. And that is sin because anything that does not come from faith is sin (Romans 14:23).

The Hidden Reason of Action - Part 1

Disclaimer: This blog post will undoubtedly show the trueness of my nerdy side. But bear with me.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching an episode of Star Trek Voyager. Two members of the crew, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres (who are married), found out that they were pregnant and going to have a baby girl. Now B'Elanna is half Klingon and half human and they found out that their baby girl would have a lot of the Klingon characteristics her mother had. From that point on, B'Elanna spent the rest of the episode trying to get the doctor to genetically alter the baby's DNA, while it was in the womb, so that it wouldn't have any Klingon characteristics. The whole time, you think the reason she is doing this is because of what is shown in a memory of B'Elanna camping with her father and cousins. The memory shows how much she was picked on as a little girl for being half Klingon and it also shows a conversation her father had with his brother about how hard it is to live with Klingons. Here is one of the final scenes at the climax of the episode.

What struck me about this scene was that B'Elanna's true fear was revealed. The whole episode you think she is trying to change the baby so that her daughter won't get picked on like she was, which is a valid desire. But B'Elanna's real reason was the fear that if her daughter had Klingon DNA then Tom would leave her just like her father left. And it was that fear that drove her to try and change her own daughters DNA.

So many times in my life there is a hidden reason for an action that I am taking. I think I am doing something for one reason, but really it's coming out of a deep fear related to an experience that I had at some point in my past. It's amazing to me how my past experiences can engrave themselves on my heart and still effect me today. And it's the painful experiences, like B'Elanna's, that have the most effect on how I live my life today. And my guess is that it's the same for you.

So how can I figure out what those hidden reasons are and how do I deal with them? I'll talk more about that in Part 2.