Clothed in clouds and rainbows Revelation 10

I saw another strong angel coming down out of the heaven, clothed with a cloud, and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was like the sun, and his feet like pilllars of fire. Rev. 10:1

Wow. Now from the very start I will tell you that I am not a scholar when it comes to the book of Revelation, and I will not try to give you a theological view of this verse. I will be digesting it from the point of view of a true novice and from the “under the sun” view of things.

The trumpets have sounded, vials poured, seals broken...all kinds of chaos are poured out upon the earth. Judgments are being poured out upon the earth, and here comes another angel, dressed in a cloud, shining brightly with a rainbow like a crown or halo. This makes sense. Rainbows come from rain clouds with light shining through them. The rainbow was the symbol immediately after the flood given to Noah and his crew offered their sacrifice upon stepping on the earth again, the sign that God would not destroy the world with water again. It doesn't represent God never judging the world again at all, just not by water.

This time, we are told, it would be by fire.

So this beautiful angel in cloud and rainbow comes and stands on the earth and on the water, but the storm is not over. Think about it. When do you see a rainbow? It is after the storm has passed. He roars and says something, but John is not allowed to tell us what is said. Doesn't that make you curious? What did he reveal to John that God would not want us to know before the time? But he does continue to speak, and this we do hear. He “lifted his right hand to heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, WHO CREATED HEAVEN AND THE THINGS IN IT, AND THE EARTH AND THE THINGS IN IT, AND THE SEA AND THE THINGS IN IT,that there will be delay no longer, but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished, as He preached to His servants the prophets. Rev 10:5-7

That's it, he says. God created all of this and it is over. It's out with the old, and in with the new. The promise of the flood is over, and we are starting over. New heaven, new earth, and no more sea. The only lake will be the lake of fire.

A cloud is made of water, and this is what the angel is dressed in. The water of the air. I read of smoke filling the heavens around the throne, and there is thunder and lightning coming from the throne of God. Rev. 4 gives us this image. Voices of the angels thunder throughout heaven during the breaking of the seals and other actions taken in heaven and earth. Maybe these cease when the rainbow-clad angel comes to earth? The wrath of God will no longer shake heaven? Maybe God is done with that stuff and is moving on to another means of judgment? Like I said, I am no prophetic interpreter, but we are given images we can understand to some extent, and this would make sense to me. But then I read on and in chapter 17 there is more thunder and lightning...more smoke of the glory of God, so what do I know. I know that God has a symbol of rainbow, currently stolen by a group that is taunting God, believing their sin is not judgeable, but acceptable and needing to be accepted by the world. I know that He will not be taunted and that His patience does have an end. Over and over He delayed judgments on nations. Their iniquity was not “full”. They start out evil and get past the point of no return, and then He sent destroyers to clean up the mess. Every generation accepts a little evil, thinking it is harmless, and before they know it, the consequences come. The sin produces problems, the problems create actions that multiply the consequences, and the people who sin believe that more sins are acceptable. When we are so full of sin that righteousness looks foolish, there is nothing left for God to do but step in. The only way to cure cancer is to cut it out, chemo it to hit where it has spread, and radiate the immediate area where the cancer was concentrated to make sure it is all gone and doesn't take root again. It is a harrowing process. Sickness, burns, pain, and agony. But when it is said and done, there is remission, and in some cases, healing. Our rainbow-clad angel is telling us that this particular cancer has spread so far that it cannot be cured. The treatment to kill off the cancer cells will kill the patient. But it cannot be allowed to live any longer. It's a sad deal, but the clean-up of the universe is going to be put into action.

There is much to learn from our rainbow-clad friend. He points to God, the creator, and says that He did create all of this, and it is His to do with as He pleases, including destroy it all for rebelling. He tells John and the time to end all of evil has come. This is terrifying, but will result in those of the kingdom seeing the Blessed Hope coming and all going back to pre-rebellion. New heaven is coming, new earth, and a wedding. With all that is happening in the world, the tension is mounting. Who can do something about the mess we are getting ourselves into? God will deal with it, so when the rainbow-clad angel comes, know that it will be resolved quickly. Then we will be able to rest and rejoice. Until that time, keep looking up.

Royal robes John 19

 And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and put a purple robe on Him. John 19:2 Jesus then came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. vs. 5

It has been a few weeks since Easter, Good Friday, etc. but the message of the crucifiction is never out of date. It is the essence of Christianity. If you really look at the story of Jesus getting bounced from one ruler to another during the trials before His condemnation, you will see that the issue they had was His kingship. Pilate directly pointed this out...”Shall I crucify your king?” was his question to the Jews, and the sign he placed over His head on the cross convicted Him of being KING OF THE JEWS. The Jewish rulers convened and said they would rather have Rome ruling over them than let Jesus stir things up. It was all a matter of whether Jesus was their King or not.

King:dictionary.reference.com/browse/king

• a male sovereign or monarch; a man who holds by life tenure, and usually by hereditary right, the chief authority over a country and people.

This is the definition of a king. It's a guy who inherits the right to rule.

And Jesus in their mind didn't qualify, but it was not because He didn't tell them He did. He told them over and over that God was His Father, and if that were true, that would make Him the inheritant of world authority. He should have been respected, listened to, and obeyed, though He didn't ask much of most people. Most were taught, a few were asked to do basic things to show they had faith, like washing their eyes or heading toward the synagogue, at which time they were healed. A few that wanted to walk close were asked to give things up and follow Him. But He never asked them to join an army, pay Him taxes or teaching fees, or to do anything He didn't do or set the example for them to copy. He was King, but He didn't exalt Himself. If He would have tried, they may have said worse things about Him. The people wanted to make Him king. He was nice, He healed people, met their physical needs, had compassion and cried with them. He was everything they thought a good leader should be. But He turned down the earthly kingship for an eternal one.

Did you ever think of what would have happened if He had let His power go to His head? He told them He could have called 10,000 angels to save Him. He could have taken over the temple at any point by force, but He let the Pharasees keep it. He could have wiped out the Romans, but He let them rule and told people not to bother fighting them. If He had not died, we would still be in our sin. We would be hopeless.

There have been a lot of things in life lately that make me feel a little on the hopeless side. Physical, psychological, financial...all sorts of things can grab a hold of the heart and wring the hope right out of it. And then I think of Christ. The worst thing that happened to Him was the best thing that happened to me (and you, if you accept it), and we are reassured that this world is not “It.” This isn't all there is. People will let us down, sin against us, die, cheat us, fire us, talk about us behind our backs...you get the drift.

But Jesus is King. He came out in the purple robe as a broken man because that is how the world sees Him. That's not how I see Him, for He is no longer broken. He is all powerful, all loving and kind, and He is the ruler of my life and of those who join the kingdom. He is benevolent to His own. Like Peter, we can be assured that Satan has permission to sift us like wheat, but He can't take our souls. Any pain of this world is a temporary thing. Any persecution will just make Glory all the better. We are a part of the eternal army that one day will someday put evil to eternal silence. He has promised, written the decree, and knows the beginning from the end. The older I get, the more I realize that the days slip away quickly, and carrying the burdens of them wearies the bones, greys the hair, and zaps our joy.

But when things get bleak, we hear a gentle voice calling us into the throne room. We are reminded whose we are, see a glimpse of the castle we will get to live in, and hear the songs of the angels in our hearts. The doubts slowly melt away, replaced by the peace that passes understanding. We will walk on water even in the midst of the storm. The King will wear the proper royal robes, and if He wants them to be purple or scarlet or changes them frequently during His eternal reign for our enjoyment, He will. We will reign with Him, so I guess our robes will be royal ones, too. He doesn't force His kingship on us...He lets us decide which kingdom we will serve. As much as we like to think we run our own lives, we don't. We will always have a ruler, and we get to choose who that is. I choose Christ. I choose to enter the throneroom for direction and comfort and peace of mind and heart. Won't you join me there?

Lifted Skirts Nahum 3

“Behold, I am against you,” declares the Lord of hosts; “And I will lift up your skirts over your face, and show to the nations your nakedness and to the kingdoms your disgrace.” Nahum 3:5

No one likes to be humiliated. I personally have faced public humiliation a few times, and it is HORRIBLE. A couple of times I probably earned it, but many times, I was innocent, or at the least, clueless. There is nothing like having all of your faults put on parade to a watching public. It is mortifying. You want to crawl under a rock and never come out. You fear showing your face for years to come. Going home to my five year class reunion was a step of faith way back in the day, and when people actually APOLOGIZED for how they treated me, I was stunned...and relieved. It wasn't ALL me. As I have aged and learned and looked back, I am embarassed at my actions and attitudes that at the time seemed perfectly justifiable to me. But others did not see me that way. I was not being honest with myself, and their being honest with me was not kind. But truth is revealed eventually. And with God, all truth of motive, action, pride, humility...all will be shown for the truth of what it is...there will be no faking it, no justifying it. All will be uncovered. We usually do not admire those who uncover people's weaknesses and humiliate them. So where does God get off talking like this? So who are we talking about here? Who does God want to humiliate? Why would a loving God say such a thing, the watching world would ask?

Well, this passage is about Nineveh...described in verse one here as “bloody, completely full of lies and pillage, swords, spears, corpses, sorceries and harlots.” These were not nice people, folks. This is the city that Jonah ran from God over. I have heard stories of skulls stacked feet high around the city as a warning to others to keep away, as trophies of their military prowess. They were not nice to enemies, and were morally corrupt toward one another. It and Babylon are both symbols of total evil and depravity in scripture. They thought they were something, but God was going to humble them, showing that under that skirt of war and victory, they were naked, vulnerable, and disgraceful losers. They would not be able to intimidate the Lord God of the Universe into thinking they were undefeatable. They were filthy animals of human beings. Along with harlotries came diseases...and those would also be shown by their nakedness. They could never cover their sin forever...they would be shown for what they really were, just men.

So there we have it. It says in Hebrews that all things will be laid bare before the one to whom we must give account...we have touched on this before. We can dress up and play Christian, good girl, and honorable person, but God knows if we are or not. And some day the whole world will know. We will be shown for what we are. Are we a child of God, or are we faking it? Are our skirts beautiful, or full of the blood of the innocents? In either case, what are the skirts covering? Is there disease, uncleanness, and filth? The filth of our bodies comes out of us in these places, and some of us are not very good at using the tp to clean it up. We are full of filth...it is a part of who we are, and eventually it has to come out of us or it will kill us from the inside. If we are not nurturing life, other filth comes out, and the skirts also covered that. There is little that is pleasant under the skirt. The Lord cleans us up like a baby needs to be cleansed of its filth. But the enemies of God continue in their evil ways, the filth accumulating day after day. Every once in a while, we can clean ourselves up, but the filth still continues to come out day after day, year after year, event after ugly event.

Are we threatening people with our masquerade? Do they fear the person behind the mask of horror like the phantom of the opera? Is the person behind that mask really a threat, or merely acting out, thrashing against the God who made them? Do we fear the God who would cleanse us instead of fearing the flesh-eating filth that we choose to live in day after day?

So to make this a little more uplifting, let's look at the other end of this thing. The skirts may be lifted to humiliate the enemies of God, but the children of God will be dressed by Him, handed their clothing of white. It will reflect the pure, clean nature of the one distributing them. They will be exalted, lifted up to reign with Him over heaven and earth. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus as Lord, even the enemies, but after that, we will be separated from them. That confession will be made in one of 2 ways...one set of people will bow in worship and adoration and joy, and the others will be forced to see God for who He is, realize they rejected the one that would have lovingly taken them in and cleaned them up, and state to their own condemnation that Jesus is the Lord that they willingly refused over all the years of their lives. It is after that day that we will never experience humiliation again. There will be no more sin, no more filth, and no more exposure of our weaknesses, for we will not have any. It will be heaven. Literally.

So are you fighting the God who wants to clean you up like a baby thrashing on a changing table, or are you grateful for the God who will clean you, clothe you, and present you to the world as His? Your choice! But the cleansing comes through the fountain of the blood of Christ. He paid for the bath, the clothes, and the ceremony of adoption, and the wedding feast...who would turn that down for a skirt-raising with the Ninevites? Not me!

Never to fade 1 Peter

To obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through FAITH for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:4-5

It has been a particularly hard week on this old body. It is weeks like this that I look forward to "imperishable" and "undefiled." I thank God for the time to reflect on His Word, to slow me down in mind as well as body. I fold down the corners of my Bible when I want to flag a verse for this blog. And the corner of this page was folded down. Hmmm...not a reference to be found. But then there was the word FADE.

I don't know about you, but fading has caused me to trash more than one piece of fabric or clothing. Long, long ago I bought a BUNCH of solid fat quarters, supposedly to make something Amish-looking,  I really am a tone-on-tone kind of girl. Those are fabrics that read a color, but consist of mottled or printed shades of the same color. They make the project look richer and make color matching a bit easier as well. So buying those solids was a leap of faith. I don't know how long those things sat out unused, but when the box of them surfaced at some point in a cleaning binge, I was glad that I never did use much of them. EVERY fold was faded. When the fabric was unfolded, the fading became more obvious. Well, cut around it, you might say. Nope...not this girl. Now you are reading the blog of the world's biggest cheapskate, but this cheapskate did not keep that fabric because I knew what would happen if that stuff was put into anything. Those dyes in that fabric were not stable, and the fading would continue, ruining the project that they were put into. If it faded that badly once, it would stay true to its nature and fade more when exposed to light. I was sad to toss it, but glad I hadn't gone ahead and invested time and effort into projects made with it. I now knew its nature and its future. I suppose there might have been ways to set the dye in the remaining hunks of fabric, but the risk was not worth it.

Other fabrics have faded due to direct sunlight. The lap quilt that I drape over the back of the sofa is another example. That thing is showing the effects of the sun to a lesser degree, even with UV resistant windows, but the light is still causing it to deteriorate, just more as a whole as opposed to the more obvious fading of a fold. Light just does that to fabrics. The more the light shines, the more the glory of earthly things fade.

It is like that with the Lord, too. He is light and He shines on us, and our glory, the things we have done or thought we had done that were “impressive” in any way fall apart. When compared with the Lord of Glory, our works are as filthy rags. We are called in Peter to be HOLY, and that Holiness can only come from God. We are instructed to conduct ourselves in fear during our stay on the earth, redeemed by the imperishable blood of Christ. The grass withers and the flowers fade. All of this earth and its glories are temporary, but the Word of the Lord and His love for us endures forever! We will be transformed, first in the renewal of our minds, then in our actions, and eventually, in our bodies. The worship we will bring to God will be whole and wholely acceptable. The glory of His light shining on us in THAT day will not fade us. The inheritance we receive will not wear out like money and the things it can buy. What does one pay to inherit something? Nothing. It is bestowed on a person by declaration of the giver. We have 3 times inherited little bits of things...once from parents, once from an uncle, and once from a long-lost relative somehow. The things that were paid off or purchased with that money...cars, sofas, house repairs...all have been either deteriorating or have been disposed of in some way. The car died, the sofa cushions are slightly torn from use, and the house is in continual need of repair. But the inheritance from the Lord will be the joy of His presence, the absence of the desire to sin and the consequences of the sins of our own or those of others, and the eternal crowns that we can present at His feet. The feasting will provide joy, not fill a hunger in our bodies and souls. The houses we will have will be used not to sleep and provide shelter, but to refresh our souls and provide private places for fellowship with the One who loves us. All these things will not fade, will not go out of fashion and be discarded like old clothes and rags. Everything will have eternal purpose, eternal beauty, and eternal praise for the Creator.

And our joy will not fade. It amazes me how I can celebrate the presence of His goodness one minute, and have it fade to doubt and worry the next. Oh, for the day when that joy does not fade, the trust does not fade, the peace and love do not fade. I am so thankful that God knows we are dust and that we are grass. We DO fade. We wither and shrivel and die inside and out, but reread that verse. We are protected by FAITH from even ourselves. We have a reservation...we have a glimpse of the inheritance, as we watch Jesus raised from the dead, He who was once not only faded in popularity, but snuffled out of life. But now He stands glowing brightly next to the Father. His light will never fade again, and neither will ours in that coming day. We will not be tossed out like faded cloth, but restored to the glory of His perfect creation. This is something only He can do...and we are blessed to be a part of it. AMEN!

Glowing garments

And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. Matthew 17:2

If you ever wondered where the whole angels wearing white thing came from, and pictures of a glowing Jesus were painted of, this would be one of the passages. The disciples had walked with Jesus for almost 3 years, and until this point, He looked like just an average guy. If we take the Bible as a whole, Isaiah says there was nothing about him that was attractive. He was common as dirt. I really think the movies overdo what he was really like. He was not necessarily talk, dark, or handsome. His robes were not white with a sash while everyone else work tunics. The pictures always seem to make him out as someone different in appearance, and I think that leads us to wonder how the rulers of the day couldn't tell by looking at him that He was different. Their complaint was that he was just an ordinary guy, with brothers and sisters, who hadn't gone to seminary and just wandered among the people telling stories and healing commoners.

Until that day when He took His three best friends and showed them who He really was. It was kind of like Undercover Boss, where He had played dress up and gone among the employees to find out what was really going on in the company. Then those few people that the boss got close to were taken into the office and got to see who they were REALLY interacting with for that period of time. In not one case of Undercover Boss did the people treat the boss the same after they knew who he really was. Their behavior changed when they knew who they were really dealing with. And this is probably why Peter and John wrote so prolifically on the life of Jesus afterward, though they must have really given Matthew an earful for him to recount this story. Jesus showed them who was boss that day for their benefit.

I get the fact that Jesus would glow in His heavenly glory, but so did His clothes. When Moses came off the mountain, his face glowed, but not his clothes. He reflected God's glory to the Israelites (and how they could then turn on him, knowing God met with him and had the inside track to be able to strike them dead, I'll never know), but it did not totally consume him with the glory. Jesus, well, everything about Him was glorious. Matthew doesn't recount John's reaction here, but in Revelation, John recalls his being dropped to his knees when he caught a vision of the shining Christ. In Matthew, it took the voice of God to drop him, and not just the shining Jesus. I guess the song “I Can Only Imagine” makes sense, since people would eventually bow down or turn away in fear, but the initial reactions can vary when we see Christ in His various roles and situations.

Everything Jesus touches is glorious, and all that look to Him will reflect His glory. It says in Revelation that God will illumine His people in the 22^nd chapter. There will be need of no sun. Some verses say that He will give them light, or indicate that He will be the sun of heaven. There will be no curse of darkness any more. It makes me wonder, since I am no Greek scholar, if we will be glowing, too. It says He will illumine us and we will reign forever and ever. That He will give us light. Will we have His light in us, or will His light just be around us. I guess we will have to wait and find out, but either way, it will be spectacular.

His glowing garments became a part of His glory, and I do believe that our own glow, the richness of our contemplative grins when we recount to one another what Christ has done for us, becomes a part of our communion with Him. We cannot help but to glow when we think of His touch on our lives, and if we feel as close as His clothes, clinging to Him as an adornment with adoration, we will reflect His contact in our lives.

And there is not a better place to be.

Shorter tassels, please

But they do their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. Matthew 23:5

Gotta love Google. A phylactery. I finally looked it up because the thought of wearing a box on your head seemed a little odd. And granted, it does look that way. Look it up. Sort of like a unicorn with a square box instead of a long horn. But I digress.

It is the day after Easter here. The day after a lot of people show up for church that never go any other time of the year. Those who attend regularly raise an eyebrow to this type of church attendance, but it is the people who Jesus describes in this verse that may make the idea of going regularly unappealing. Most people don't have as much of a problem with God as they do with His people. And these are the show-offs. They keep the law to the letter (all except the part about loving), they memorize verses and quote them with glee, not to edify the body, but to show off and brag of their “time in the Word.” They dress only in suits and ties, or in this case, in tassel-adorned robes. Yes, tassels were called for in scripture, as were the phylacteries. Well, sort of. They were told to write the law and bind it to their foreheads and tie it to their arms. I sort of think God meant to put it into their minds, and act them out in their actions, but they took it literally. They made boxes to store scripture in and tied them on. So now we have guys that think that size matters, and they make their boxes bigger than the norm, probably to indicate that they treasure the law more than the next guy. There may not be anything in them at all, but, by George, we have to look good. We have to make our religion show outwardly by building a better verse-holder. And the tassels...well, the longer, the better. See how we love the law!?! We are wearing the longest tassels we can make or afford. We are religious, dog gone it! How else are you going to figure that out when we walk the streets? How else are we going to have you respect us as we go about our daily business? How else will you grovel at our feet and think we have some great revelation from God?

Jesus was not fooled by their head/arm boxes (both if you were super religious)/ He knew their hearts. He knew that they did not keep the law. Oh, they may not have knelt to other gods, but they didn't kneel to their own God, either, in their hearts. They kept the law to prove their own goodness, not to honor God's. They were self-righteous, and nothing turns off God or others more than a good, self-righteous person. They are obnoxious. They are pompous. And they are far from the heart of God.

Here Jesus tells them to not look for the respect of men in church, but to serve. Not to have people call you Teacher or some other title, but to be brothers to one another. This is about not exalting yourself, but exalting God first, and others over yourself. Any pastor or teacher who is not willing to clean the toilets in the church (given the time and opportunity, which many do not have) should not be trusted. He is considering himself above the congregation he is serving.

This is not to say that we are not to honor those God does put in leadership over us. Quite the contrary. But it is pretty obvious on tv or in some churches you visit to see pastors who are just that – caretakers of the flock, and then there are those out for their own fame and fortune. The first are to be honored for their tender mercy and hard work among the sheep, those who wander and those who need guidance. The second should be avoided and ignored. They may get their recognition in this life, but the life to come may be a little more interesting. Jesus puts this in the context of us vs. them. Jesus, the greatest religious teacher ever, walked with the people, talked to the people, touched the everyday personal lives of those around him. He was as common as dirt. And the Pharisees dressed up, put on airs, and made sure everyone knew they were temple people that just happened to come out and check on this rebel speaker once in a while to catch Him saying something wrong. They had studied the Torah, but He lived it. They had training in spiritual matters, but He communicated the Spirit of God to everyone around Him. They made up little laws to expand on God's laws so that only they could keep up with the standards, burdening the people with so many details and never demonstrating in truth how they could be attained. Jesus said to do what they said, but not as they did. Obey the law in humble heart, submissive to God, and not man, but don't make a show of it. It is not for man that we obey God. It is not for approval and self-aggrandizement that the law was given, but to turn men's hearts to repentance and refocus on Who and what matters.

So if you don't wear the law on your body, it's ok, as long as you wear it in your heart. And that is the place where everyone WILL see it. When you wear the Word, it will be beautiful and men will see your godliness, with no tassels necessary.

What did you expect? Soft clothing?

Matthew 11:8 What did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Those who wear soft clothing are in kings' palaces.

Here Jesus speaks of John the Baptist. We have pondered in an earlier post how he was dressed, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Camel's hair, a belt, and some sandals. Not much glory was shown in how he dressed, but Jesus said no other man born to that point was greater than John. Now THAT is saying something. Jesus said he was Elijah that was to come. So here are 2 men that were not what the world expected.

And thus the topic.

JUST WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

We all have preconceived notions of how life or people are going to be. We will graduate, get a job, get married and have kids, retire, and live a good life. We expect presidents to be great men of high intelligence and character. We expect pastors and preachers to be perfect, or as close as humans can get to it. We expect to be honored for getting good grades with scholarships, to get a raise for being a good employee, and to have our spouse's undying affection because they picked us out of the crowd. We live in a world full of expectations, and when reality clashes with our expectations, we fall apart. We question God, our systems of government, our establishments like schools, and our churches and family members.

And God's retort is,”Well, what did you expect?”

No prophet up to the time of John was loved by the country they warned. They were all a little weird to the world's eyes. John filled that bill. But when God says He is going to do something, His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways not our ways. Isaiah 55. Jesus fulfilled every scripture about himself, but even the men who walked with him questioned until his resurrection that He was really what God had predicted. In the aftermath, they understood, but in the midst of it all, their pre-conceived notions blinded them to the reality of what they were experiencing. It happens to all of us. We all live in a dream-world made of our own expectations. When life doesn't come through according to Plan A, we question everything. Did we take the right job, marry the right person, or join the right church? Doesn't God understand that this is NOT how life is supposed to play out. I do the right thing and I am supposed to be rewarded, not ridiculed or fired. My kids are supposed to obey, my spouse is supposed to love and treat me like a princess. And my God is supposed to rule on a throne and not let bad things happen. And the last thing that is supposed to happen is that His people scatter when the whip falls on the back of the most perfect man in the universe. This God doesn't make sense. We cower in the corner, question everything, and wonder what is going on. Just like the people of Jesus' day, just like the disciples, and just like the Pharisees. We miss the One because we thought we knew what He was going to be like. They had visions of David's throne, not a cross; overthrowing Rome, not being killed by it; being an educated seminarian, not common working class carpenter's son. It WAS all there. Every key to unlock the mystery was there like a good who-done-it, but because they expected it to look one way, they missed all the clues that pointed the other direction.

We want the soft clothes...the comforts of the ruling elite. We want our Savior and King to really be something that other people can admire so we don't look like fools following and supporting Him while He runs around Israel. Even at the point where most abandoned Him, the disciples stuck it out only because they knew He was Him, though they were confused about how this Savior thing was going to play out.

Yes, my friend, life will throw us curve balls and not turn out the way we expect, but does that mean that God doesn't know what He is doing? FAR FROM IT. THE worst situation, THE greatest injustice, THE rejection of the perfect ONE, did the greatest good for you and me, and the whole world.

We look at the world falling apart around us at an alarming speed, but it was foretold. We as Christians (and Jews, too) are berated by the world and media, governments and courts, and we act surprised. Didn't Jesus say that if He suffered rejection that we would too if we were His? Yes, He did. And yet we don't expect it to play out this way because it isn't fair in our mind. The health and wealth gospel has conveniently left the actual words of Christ out of their playbooks and we have bitten on the hook at some point because we really don't want to believe Jesus on this point. Family members will turn against each other, employers will fire us over our definition of family, and health care professionals will have to quit because they refuse to kill in one form or another. It was foretold. And we don't like it. Not one little bit.

So when life doesn't make sense there is comfort in the words that I ask myself often of God, “What did you expect?,” and then sit back and let Him be Him, because in all of history, He is never what we expected. And then I wait in true expectation for Him to do the Good that He has planned. The real, “Not my will but Thine be done,” expectation not of current comfort and resolution of problems, but the anticipation of God's eternal purposes that I cannot even fathom. If the cross was good, how can I question anything less catastrophic being anything less than good as well? It may not be comfortable, but it will be GOOD, because God is GOOD. Peace this Easter season.