When I Awake, I Am Present With You

In Which Lent Seems To Have Come Early

File: The Resurrection. From an Ethiopian prayer book (CBL W 942, f.2v).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Well, in the spirit of not being the worst mother ever, we delayed our going hence after another child fell ill with the crud yesterday. I’m super glad we gave ourselves a lot of time, thinking we would drive down slowly, for this way we will be able to still get where we are going, and my offspring will not resent me for forbearing to smooth their fevered brows in order to attend to a speaking engagement. It’s the best of both worlds. Prayer request for the day—no one gets it while we’re gone.

Also, huge blessing, some wonderful friends have a fridge they’re not using, which will buy us a little time to consider our options instead of having to furiously settle for whatever comes up first on the Facebook marketplace.

Our dear friend and parishioner died yesterday, probably while I was writing my post. I’m so grieved. She and her husband were the first people to greet us when we arrived at Good Shepherd. I was, if I remember correctly, heavily pregnant and anxious about being a stranger in a strange land. They helped and guided us through so many of the early troubles of parish life. When we lost the lawsuit over our old building, she took all our heaps of laundry away and washed and folded and brought them back. When my little toddlers ground my nice makeup into the carpet, she took me out and bought me some that was much nicer.

What is this like? It’s like when a rock you are leaning against is thrown into the sea and you feel naked and unmoored.

I know that we all go down to the grave, one by one—didn’t I say this just last week?—but it’s not meant to be this way. We shouldn’t have to endure the deaths of those we love.

Matt has been preaching through Acts for the last year or so, with breaks for special liturgical seasons like Advent and Christmas. And the last two weeks, strangely enough, Paul has been standing before Agrippa and Festus, explaining that the reason he is on trial is because of the resurrection. And for many days I’ve been a little bit frustrated, baffled even. Why? Because, if you read through Acts, the reason that all the people around him say he’s on trial is because they believed he brought a Gentile into the Temple. They are angry about all those people who have been brought near by the blood of the cross, about the dividing wall being broken down between people rightfully alienated from each other. No one ever says, ‘I’m so angry about the resurrection.’

And why would they be? If you had the chance to live instead of die, wouldn’t you take it? No matter the cost?

But the lections for this morning, if you are lingering over the daily office, cast light upon the path. In Exodus, Pharoah, in wroth, demands that more bricks be made and that the people must also gather their own straw. The coming of Moses, that great deliverer, actually made things worse—much much worse—for a time. His coming inflamed Pharoah’s passionate hatred against God’s people. Pharoah clung fiercly to his gods even as they were being defeated. So he is one side, and on the other side are the people. And they can’t possibly understand what is going on. Their eyes are on the dust of the earth, the suffering of each day, the ruin and misery of trying to scrape something together that will be enough. And all the while, God intends for the people to be delivered out of that death and into life.

It has to be about the resurrection of the dead. Paul is entirely right to make it about the Resurrection. For the Lord Christ did go to the cross to take away the sins of the world, but it was his rising to life again that destroyed death itself.

For why would anyone willingly die if they did not know the power of the resurrection? It isn’t that death overtakes the believer unawares, though that is what it always feels like. It is that when it is time to walk through the valley of death, it has been made into a shadow, a bare scrap of parched land that suddenly gives way to a vast and eternal pasture of rest and joy.

The Psalm appointed for this morning, don’t you know, is 139:

⁸ If I take the wings of the morning *

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

⁹ Even there shall your hand lead me, *

and your right hand shall hold me.

¹⁰ If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,” *

then shall my night be turned to day.

¹¹ Even the darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as clear as the day; *

the darkness and the light to you are both alike.

¹² For you yourself made my inmost parts; *

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹³ I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; *

marvelous are your works, and my soul knows it very well.

¹⁴ My bones were not hidden from you *

when I was made in secret and fashioned in the depths of the earth.

¹⁵ Your eyes beheld my substance, while I was yet unformed; *

and in your book were all my members written,

¹⁶ Which day by day were fashioned, *

when as yet there was none of them.

¹⁷ How dear to me are your thoughts, O God. *

How great is the sum of them!

¹⁸ If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand. *

When I wake up, I am present with you.

And on that note, I’ve gotta go pack up the car. May God give you every good and perfect gift, even the ones that are a little hard to cope with.