Meditations on Good Friday...(2)

Maybe it's not as much about respect or somber remembrance. I mean, don't get me wrong---there's probably a due amount there. My pastor has been talking a lot recently about Jesus and Simon Peter. Peter played a starring role in the Good Friday narrative. I suppose that if Jesus was the marquee player, Peter would be the big supporting role--the foil. You see, I'm Peter.

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I just left a career. Lots of reasons, but a big part of it-I just couldn't handle the tension between the two worlds I live in. I worked as a custom cabinet maker for last 11 years or so. And for the most part I loved it. And hope to return to woodworking at some point soon. Just maybe not for the man. I mean, I know all the passages about working for my employer as if he were himself Jesus. But I couldn't seem to find my stride in navigating the treacherous waters that roll back and forth between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of spirits of the age.

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Maybe Good Friday is just as much about treachery. About MY frailty as a follower.

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Meditations on Good Friday...(1)

I must confess something: I've never really understood today. I've never known how to feel. Today the "X" on the calendar pierces the heart of history. Today people all around the world will allow themselves to have nails driven though their hands. They will walk the streets of their hometowns whipping themselves. Others will sit in dark rooms and chant chants that have been chanted for hundreds and hundreds of years by thousands of nameless faces.

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But most of us will just go to work like we usually do. I always have. I know our Canadian brethren will take the day off, but I don't think I ever saw any of them in any parades. Perhaps I'm displaying ignorance. I'm sure someone will tell me.

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I think I always had the sense that I was supposed to be somber. Or respectful. (Shrug). I don't really know. I don't know that I've ever been instructed differently.

Tonight, I'll go to meeting and sing songs of worship & lament. Songs that praise the greatness of God and acknowledge the singularity of His sacrifice. Songs that draw our eyes to the cross. And we will collectively meditate on the crucifixion. But key to my confession is this: it's hard for me to appropriately recognize the tragedy because I have already put my confidence in His raising back to life. His resurrection.

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The dead child? or the bleeding woman?

I was trying to install a telephone line addition in my kitchen. Well, actually, I was trying to fix something I jacked up earlier. WELL, it was messed up because I was trying to cheat the system and stick it to the man.

Anyways, as I was showing the man, I could overhear my wife read my 4 year old son a story handed down to him through 2,000 years of storytelling. It was the story of a man who on the face of it, had no particular agenda at all. I say that only because of the evidence. I mean, at times he seemed determined to do something. And he'd even at times make comments to that effect. But then, in a maddeningly random fashion, he seemed to at this time, follow the demands of individuals as they were presented to him, and at other times say, "no, I must go."

What in the world is he doing? In one case, he tried to get away from people, but they followed him. Did he persist? No, he relented. He relented and then he fed them all. I'm sure that taught them a lesson.

In another case he is "on the way" and some dude pushes his way through the crowd and boldly pleads that he come visit his home to heal his sick daughter. Now, I don't know where he was going to up to that point, but he apparently decided to put that little mission on the back burner, because he agreed to make a house call for bold-dude.

And then, on the way to bold-dude's place, he's mobbed, and some body grabs ahold of his jacket, hoping that some sort of proximity miracle will happen. Did the secret service jump in and insulate him? You bet they did. But then what happened? Did he continue on his way to bold-dude's appointment? Nope.

Growing up, I've always had a sense of destiny. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's the consolation of a pop-off kid with too few friends. Maybe it's a seed of God. I'll tell you later. Way later. Anyways, that destiny always seems to be out "there" somewhere. It's a destination that I'm working towards, and whatever it is that I'm doing now, or working on now, is just sort-of a side-line gig until all the stars align and I get my ticket punched.

But I'm starting to realize that my destiny isn't far-off. It isn't years down the line. I may not live years down the line. I have learned that I might not live to eat dinner with my family tomorrow night. My destiny, my mission, is only one step away. And if I live through that, I will surely find that it has expanded. By one step.

Hinge

I imagine myself as a hinge.  I am firmly planted, one foot in this world, familiar, and understood.  But the other is planted on a side only understood as "other."  This other world is unfamiliar.  It is a mystery.  It is comfortable, and unnerving.  It consoles me even as it upsets me with it's unpredictability.  But it burns through holes in the fence boards.  

I am the hinge.  If you stand close enough you can see through the knuckles.  If I can reach you I will grab you and swing you through the gate.  I'll be on the other side too.  I'll look different, but it's still me, the hinge.  I just swung you around the place where my feet are planted.

I live on the pivot.  I am strapped to the fence post and I swing and move with the gate.  Sometimes I resist.  Sometimes I groan or squeak irritatingly.  Occasionally, the gate is pulled just so and it flows open.  Usually not.

From where I am I can see bits of both sides.  But I can't explain either side very well.

It's not a job, at least not as I reckon jobs.  It's not a job as much as it is my place.  Where I am is what I do is who I am is what I like is how I do what I know I must.