THOUGHTS

April 6, 2020

I am reposting previous ones I've written for Holy Week.

These are ones that reveal Jesus' great love, His compassion for us.

March 11, 2013

"JESUS WEPT."

Most of us have said this verse as children when asked to quote a Bible verse.  However, one scholar said, "Jesus Wept," was not the shortest verse in the Bible.  instead "rejoice always," in the original language is the shortest.  The juxtaposition of these together is fascinating.  In the Jewish culture, mourning meant the louder, the better.  Professional mourners were often hired for the funeral processions.  Yet, the word used in "Jesus Wept," means to cry silently, not wailing.

"There is a sacredness in tears.

They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.

They are messengers of overwhelming grief, and unspeakable love."

Washington Irving.

Our Savior left heaven where there are no tears to enter fully into our humanity to weep over our condition, to have so much sorrow for us that He was willing to pay the ultimate price, death on a cross, so that we could rejoice always.  

PEEPS

March 29, 2013

"Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem...

How often I wanted to gather your children together

 the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, 

and you were unwilling."

Matthew 23:37

Love my peeps.  When I was a little girl growing up in Lawrence, Kansas, we walked home from a shopping center's Easter egg hunt with special prizes of live chicks.  Some were dyed hot pink, some purple, or green as if they were eggs, not peeping babies.  I picked yellow ones, au natural.  Walking home that day, we gathered more chicks from other winners who, the closer they got to home, knew their parents wouldn't let them keep them.  However, we held out hope, and our parents said, "Yes!"  We raised those babies into mean roosters that chased the farmer who adopted them around his barnyard when they became too much for our yard in town.

When our daughter Robin was little, all she wanted for her first three years was a chicken.  "What do you want for Christmas, Robin?"  "A chicken."  "What do you want for your birthday?"  "A chicken."  One day when she was just a little older, I found a real deal chick, taxiderminied up right pretty for her.  She was in love with her dead chicken and took it to school for show and tell.  It was so cute!  She even took it to the bathroom with her until it fell in the toilet.  It never smelled quite right after that, and so like magic, it disappeared.  Eventually, the girls had real live chickens as pets in high school, some who loved to cuddle.

The children had an adopted grandma in our church in Oregon who was a Cherokee.  Velma remembers as a young child in Oklahoma while her mother worked the corn field, an older sister was assigned to watch her.  Much to her mother's consternation, when she came back from a hard, hot day of hoeing, there were little chicks running around the yard in cute little clothes.  Velma's sister had sewn doll clothes on the chicks to entertain her.

Jesus must have loved chickens.  Of all the thoughts Easter week, He sat overlooking Jerusalem and thought of chickens.  Did He once have the job of caring for the chickens for Mary when He was young?  Did He have a soft spot for chickens like my dad did for his little childhood banties?  "...how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" (KJV)  Just four verses earlier He called the scribes and Pharisees, "You serpents, you brood of vipers..."  Hawks and snakes are natural born chicken dinner lovers.  There's nothing much to a chicken in the way of defense, but a mother's love.  When the shadow of a hawk flies overhead or the mother hen's beady eye spots the slithering menace, she calls her little flock to her to hide under her wings.

  

The unwilling, wayward ones become easy prey.  Where are you this Easter season (besides at home)?  Are you unwilling to run to His grace?  His wings are outstretched.  The shadow of the enemy of your soul is across the land.  Run!