easter sized

"It was the 80's man.  It was all about whatever drugs and booze we could get our hands on."  This story seemed incongruous being told by a shriveled up hospice patient in a country kitchen filled with wooden roosters and cow print curtains.  But he wasn't done.  "Dropping LSD made me feel huge.  I stand in front of a mirror and watch myself get bigger and bigger.  And everyone else got smaller and smaller.  Tiny.  I felt so powerful."

I couldn't help but smile.  Then I thought about how many dumb things I've done to make myself feel bigger.  It's universal.  We talk about someone else.  Act like we know something we don't.  Buy things we don't need.  Wish for things we don't have.  We inflate and amplify, accumulate and coerce.  I hate feeling insignificant, overlooked, unworthy.  Small.  And am as guilty as my trippin' friend in running from it.

Today in church, we talked about Saturday of the original Easter weekend.  How the sky turned dark and earthquakes shook the land.  How the temple veil ripped from top to bottom and the sacrificial lamb escaped.  How the death of Jesus left everyone feeling small.  Peter spent Saturday lost in horrified shame.  He'd betrayed Jesus and gotten caught doing it.  Mary and the women around the cross must have spent Saturday traumatized by the violence they had helplessly witnessed - Jesus beaten, whipped, nailed and hung.  The disciples spent Saturday hiding in terror that they would be hunted and killed next.  It was a day void of pride or power, direction or hope.  I've thought about them all day.  And ached for their painful feelings of smallness that echo into my world.

And then there was Easter morning.  A day that would exchange acting big or feeling small with BEING LOVED.

I love this description from Jen Hatmaker's book 7.

"Jesus is a redeemer, a restorer in every way.  His day on the cross looked like a colossal failure, but it was His finest moment.  He launched a kingdom where the least will be the greatest and the last will be first, where the poor will be comforted and the meek will inherit the earth.  Jesus brought together the homeless with the privileged and said, "You're all poor, and you're all beautiful."  The cross leveled the playing field, and no earthly distinction is valid anymore.  There is a new "us" -people rescued by the Passover Lamb, adopted into the family and transformed into saints.  It is the most epic miracle in history.  That is why we celebrate.  May we never become so enamored by the substitutions of this world that we forget."

"It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.  Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love."John 12:1

Happy Easter!  Thank you Jesus.