the day after... (a re-post)


the day after easter... here i am in my blue bathrobe with my daughter playing in the background and i am reflecting on the remnants of easter day. this weekend wasn't one of those hallmark easter moments for me or my family-- i found myself more awkward, more out of my skin then ever before. i found myself insensitive and moody and snappy and irritable and then i went to church at 9 am. i felt god's rebuke on my life, as i have quite a bit recently. his rebuke reminded me that there is hope, there is a way and either i can trust and believe it or i can reject it and wallow in my self-pity. because you know that is what it is in so many of our lives any more-- self pity. things don't go our way, things don't turn out as we expected them to, relationships take drastic shifts and what do we do-- we feel sorry for ourselves. maybe the pity doesn't start til after a healthy dose of grieving and offering our pain to god, but somewhere in the mix we feel bad for ourselves-- we feel like we deserve to have that space to ourselves which only perpetuates our desire to stay in that place. i think of christ and if anyone had the right to feel sorry for himself it was he. after all, the disappointments of humanity turning their back on god and himself lay on his shoulders. he constantly was rejected, misunderstood-- he was called a fraud, a sham. yet, he didn't languish in self pity-- he went to a cross to die a horrible, shame-filled death of ridicule & mockery so that you and i could be here today (me writing this entry, you reading it). yet, we still languish in our self pity, our self defeat.

i feel god's call to reject that idol. the idol of self defeat where we think that we are entitled to sit around until someone picks us up and puts us on our feet. enough is enough. easter is a reminder that evil has been dealt with-- three times over through the life, the death, the resurrection of christ. it is time to rejoice, to pick up our crosses and follow him.