When grammar brings you to tears
Easter. I love Easter. I love the colors. I love the joy. I love all the frilly dresses and little suits. I love the ham and potatoes. Above all, and I do mean above all, I love what Easter represents. Jesus Christ, a man who on Thursday night had been beaten (and that's putting it nicely) for hours, nailed to two pieces of wood hanging by his own body weight for over six hours, had died on Friday. Jesus was dead. They stabbed him in the side, and water and blood came out separately. I'm not a doctor, but when I bleed, it doesn't do that. Jesus had been dead for three days, buried in a tomb with a sealed stone and guards posted (Roman guards, as in: not a friendly). On Sunday, this same Jesus rose from the dead. As in, he's not dead. He was dead; like, really dead. Smelly dead. And then, he got up, and walked out of the very tomb in which he was buried. After being dead for three days, what did he do? He went for a seven mile walk with two guys. Trust me, this was not a COVID-19 stroll, either. This was Jesus explaining the Scriptures (the Hebrew Bible) that spoke about HIMSELF and proved he was who he said he was. For two hours. He didn't stop there. Jesus was just getting started.
Easter represents the single greatest day in human history. Every religion and faith on Earth has a central figure/figures. Some have multiple gods, who have never lived on the Earth. Some have prophets, or holy figures who have lived on the Earth. Jesus Christ is God; fully God. He came to Earth and was a man. He was fully man. He walked, he talked, he ate, he slept. While the Scriptures don't specifically mention this, I know he pooped. These factors alone set Jesus Christ apart from all other religions and faiths out there. How then, can I claim that Easter Sunday is the single greatest day in human history? Not only was Jesus Christ fully God, and fully man, but, he died (the most graphic, horrific death possible to that point), and came back to life. Now, some might argue that there are plenty of books about people who died, visited Heaven, and came back to life. I am aware of that. The biggest difference between those individuals and Jesus: all those people died again, and that time it was permanent. Jesus is still alive. He is as living, active, and present today as he was 2,000 years ago when this whole thing went down.
Throughout my life, Easter has had a certain predictability. The entire day has this joy about it. Why shouldn't it? This is the single greatest day in human history. Jesus rising from the dead proved that, not only was he fully God, but he had the ability to defeat sin and death. Up to that point, and from every point after that, every single person who has been born on this earth has sinned (fallen short of the standard of perfection that God is), and, every single person has died. Jesus conquering death has made it possible for the rest of us to become in right standing with God. I'm happy to discuss that further with anyone who wishes to know more, however, for the sake of this writing today, I'm going to simply state that Jesus Christ is amazing. Awesome. GOAT. Legendary.
When I was a child, we ministered at a church that had a choir. The advertisement to join the choir actually said, "It doesn't matter if you can't sing...sing to the Lord!" This should give you all the information you need to know about this particular choir. There was a woman in choir who had a wonderful heart for Jesus...and a particularly shrill soprano. There's a hymn (several actually) we only sing on Easter, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Some fantastic soprano notes in this song. To this day, her's is the voice I hear in my head when I sing this song. There's a line in the hymn that goes: "Where O death is now thy sting?" It comes from the Old Testament, from the book of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet; a messenger of God. In Chapter 13, verse 14 of Hosea it says, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?" Today as I heard this hymn, I wept. I didn't think that Easter would be a difficult day for me. Quite the contrary. Easter has always been so joyful, so celebratory. Andrew is celebrating Easter at the foot of Jesus. That is something to celebrate! There is absolutely nothing sad about Easter. Except, today, I was sad. See, I still live on this side of eternity. Death still very much has a sting, and that sting hurts. It hurts a lot. I like how Hosea phrases it: death's plagues. In 2020, right now, we are very aware of the lasting effects of "plague". Death has it's own plagues; it's own lasting effects. The aftermath of death is lifelong. Death is not a sting like a honeybee, where you put peanut butter on it and it goes away. When I was on my honeymoon, we went snorkeling in a coral reef off the coast of the Cayman Islands. Not ten minutes into our snorkeling adventure, I turned myself around and ran smack into coral. I was stung on my upper thigh, in the back. I can't even begin to describe how painful that was, but even thinking about it right now, my heart rate jumped about 20 beats a minute. Coral stings follow nerve lines, and within an hour, I had a long, spidery, purple scar running across my leg and down. That coral sting lasted for weeks. The scar, the pain, all of it, for weeks. The sting of death is like that coral sting. It lasts. And lasts. And just when you think that it might be subsiding a bit, it flares again.
Today I wept in a way I haven't in months. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. These weren't the tears of disbelief that I cried in the beginning, nor were they the hot angry tears of months ago. These tears weren't the lonely crocodile tears that escape late at night when I'm listening to my dog snore, where my husband once snored next to me. They weren't the annoying tears that leak out at the most inopportune times, with no warning or explanation. Today's tears were tears of gratitude, of renewal, and of spiritual healing. My tears were flowing out of gratitude for the man I shared over six years of my life with, with Jesus Christ as the center of that relationship. I wept for gratitude that my husband knew Jesus Christ as his Savior, and, despite the multitude of struggles he suffered through on Earth, the one thing he could never give up on was Jesus. I wept because my husband is at peace, sitting at the feet of Jesus, partying like there is literally no tomorrow (because in Heaven there isn't one.) As I wept, my spirit and my soul felt like they were being bathed with tears. I can cry because I cry with hope. I can cry because I have known deep love, deep loss, and deep joy, and so has Jesus Christ. I can move forward in my life, knowing another holiday, another "first" has passed, and we are all here, and whole (except for Little Miss who managed to give herself a fantastic black eye this morning.)
One of the last songs that was sung today was another old hymn, "Because He Lives." Today, for the first time, I really focused on the chorus. The chorus goes:
Because He lives I can face tomorrow
Because He lives all fear is gone
Because I know who holds the future,
And life is worth the living, just because he lives
The grammar nerd in me started looking at the wording of the phrases. The word because is a cause/effect signal word (stick with me, this will all make sense and not make your eyes bleed). When I see the word because, grammatically, I can understand that what follows is the "why", or cause. Connected to that cause is the effect, or the result. As I listened to the chorus of this hymn, I wrote the words down in my journal, and began reordering them into an effect-cause formation.
I can face tomorrow. Why? Because He lives.
All fear is gone. Why? Because He lives.
[How can I do this?] Because I know who holds the future.
The last line really got to me. The word just in this line is an adverb, and you could substitute the word simply and have the same meaning.
Life is worth the living simply because Jesus is alive.
In other words, what makes life worth living every day? Jesus, and what he accomplished on Easter Sunday. What makes every moment of pain, loneliness, heartache, joy, fear, you name it, worth it? Jesus. How can I keep going day after day after day, when I'm tired, emotional, weary, and my kids are making me crazy? Jesus. At the end of the day, what makes this pain worth it? Jesus. Without Jesus and the fact that he is alive, living, active, and present, everything I have gone through in the last five months would be worthless. Because of Jesus, because of Easter, because of the cross, the experiences of the last five months (last 38 years...) are priceless. They may not feel priceless, but they are. They are moments that God will use to draw people in to the truth and reality of who He is, and the kind of life he can give. Nothing, absolutely nothing is worthless or useless when Jesus is alive. And he is alive. He is so alive.
Easter represents the single greatest day in human history. Every religion and faith on Earth has a central figure/figures. Some have multiple gods, who have never lived on the Earth. Some have prophets, or holy figures who have lived on the Earth. Jesus Christ is God; fully God. He came to Earth and was a man. He was fully man. He walked, he talked, he ate, he slept. While the Scriptures don't specifically mention this, I know he pooped. These factors alone set Jesus Christ apart from all other religions and faiths out there. How then, can I claim that Easter Sunday is the single greatest day in human history? Not only was Jesus Christ fully God, and fully man, but, he died (the most graphic, horrific death possible to that point), and came back to life. Now, some might argue that there are plenty of books about people who died, visited Heaven, and came back to life. I am aware of that. The biggest difference between those individuals and Jesus: all those people died again, and that time it was permanent. Jesus is still alive. He is as living, active, and present today as he was 2,000 years ago when this whole thing went down.
Throughout my life, Easter has had a certain predictability. The entire day has this joy about it. Why shouldn't it? This is the single greatest day in human history. Jesus rising from the dead proved that, not only was he fully God, but he had the ability to defeat sin and death. Up to that point, and from every point after that, every single person who has been born on this earth has sinned (fallen short of the standard of perfection that God is), and, every single person has died. Jesus conquering death has made it possible for the rest of us to become in right standing with God. I'm happy to discuss that further with anyone who wishes to know more, however, for the sake of this writing today, I'm going to simply state that Jesus Christ is amazing. Awesome. GOAT. Legendary.
When I was a child, we ministered at a church that had a choir. The advertisement to join the choir actually said, "It doesn't matter if you can't sing...sing to the Lord!" This should give you all the information you need to know about this particular choir. There was a woman in choir who had a wonderful heart for Jesus...and a particularly shrill soprano. There's a hymn (several actually) we only sing on Easter, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." Some fantastic soprano notes in this song. To this day, her's is the voice I hear in my head when I sing this song. There's a line in the hymn that goes: "Where O death is now thy sting?" It comes from the Old Testament, from the book of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet; a messenger of God. In Chapter 13, verse 14 of Hosea it says, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?" Today as I heard this hymn, I wept. I didn't think that Easter would be a difficult day for me. Quite the contrary. Easter has always been so joyful, so celebratory. Andrew is celebrating Easter at the foot of Jesus. That is something to celebrate! There is absolutely nothing sad about Easter. Except, today, I was sad. See, I still live on this side of eternity. Death still very much has a sting, and that sting hurts. It hurts a lot. I like how Hosea phrases it: death's plagues. In 2020, right now, we are very aware of the lasting effects of "plague". Death has it's own plagues; it's own lasting effects. The aftermath of death is lifelong. Death is not a sting like a honeybee, where you put peanut butter on it and it goes away. When I was on my honeymoon, we went snorkeling in a coral reef off the coast of the Cayman Islands. Not ten minutes into our snorkeling adventure, I turned myself around and ran smack into coral. I was stung on my upper thigh, in the back. I can't even begin to describe how painful that was, but even thinking about it right now, my heart rate jumped about 20 beats a minute. Coral stings follow nerve lines, and within an hour, I had a long, spidery, purple scar running across my leg and down. That coral sting lasted for weeks. The scar, the pain, all of it, for weeks. The sting of death is like that coral sting. It lasts. And lasts. And just when you think that it might be subsiding a bit, it flares again.
Today I wept in a way I haven't in months. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. These weren't the tears of disbelief that I cried in the beginning, nor were they the hot angry tears of months ago. These tears weren't the lonely crocodile tears that escape late at night when I'm listening to my dog snore, where my husband once snored next to me. They weren't the annoying tears that leak out at the most inopportune times, with no warning or explanation. Today's tears were tears of gratitude, of renewal, and of spiritual healing. My tears were flowing out of gratitude for the man I shared over six years of my life with, with Jesus Christ as the center of that relationship. I wept for gratitude that my husband knew Jesus Christ as his Savior, and, despite the multitude of struggles he suffered through on Earth, the one thing he could never give up on was Jesus. I wept because my husband is at peace, sitting at the feet of Jesus, partying like there is literally no tomorrow (because in Heaven there isn't one.) As I wept, my spirit and my soul felt like they were being bathed with tears. I can cry because I cry with hope. I can cry because I have known deep love, deep loss, and deep joy, and so has Jesus Christ. I can move forward in my life, knowing another holiday, another "first" has passed, and we are all here, and whole (except for Little Miss who managed to give herself a fantastic black eye this morning.)
One of the last songs that was sung today was another old hymn, "Because He Lives." Today, for the first time, I really focused on the chorus. The chorus goes:
Because He lives I can face tomorrow
Because He lives all fear is gone
Because I know who holds the future,
And life is worth the living, just because he lives
The grammar nerd in me started looking at the wording of the phrases. The word because is a cause/effect signal word (stick with me, this will all make sense and not make your eyes bleed). When I see the word because, grammatically, I can understand that what follows is the "why", or cause. Connected to that cause is the effect, or the result. As I listened to the chorus of this hymn, I wrote the words down in my journal, and began reordering them into an effect-cause formation.
I can face tomorrow. Why? Because He lives.
All fear is gone. Why? Because He lives.
[How can I do this?] Because I know who holds the future.
The last line really got to me. The word just in this line is an adverb, and you could substitute the word simply and have the same meaning.
Life is worth the living simply because Jesus is alive.
In other words, what makes life worth living every day? Jesus, and what he accomplished on Easter Sunday. What makes every moment of pain, loneliness, heartache, joy, fear, you name it, worth it? Jesus. How can I keep going day after day after day, when I'm tired, emotional, weary, and my kids are making me crazy? Jesus. At the end of the day, what makes this pain worth it? Jesus. Without Jesus and the fact that he is alive, living, active, and present, everything I have gone through in the last five months would be worthless. Because of Jesus, because of Easter, because of the cross, the experiences of the last five months (last 38 years...) are priceless. They may not feel priceless, but they are. They are moments that God will use to draw people in to the truth and reality of who He is, and the kind of life he can give. Nothing, absolutely nothing is worthless or useless when Jesus is alive. And he is alive. He is so alive.
"God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal and forgive
He lived and died to buy my pardon
An empty grave is there to prove my savior lives
He came to love, heal and forgive
He lived and died to buy my pardon
An empty grave is there to prove my savior lives
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow
Because He lives, all fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living, just because He lives
Because He lives, all fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living, just because He lives
How sweet to hold a newborn baby
And feel the pride and joy He gives
But greater still the calm assurance
This child can face uncertain day, because He lives
And feel the pride and joy He gives
But greater still the calm assurance
This child can face uncertain day, because He lives
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow
Because He lives, all fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living, just because He lives
Because He lives, all fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living, just because He lives
And then one day, I'll cross the river
I'll fight life's final war with pain
And then, as death gives way to victory
I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He reigns
I'll fight life's final war with pain
And then, as death gives way to victory
I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He reigns
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