After the Resurrection

Oh, it is going to be a hard week.  Very hard.  NOOOO!!!!  I’m not talking about those blasted TCAP tests.  I’m talking about the challenges faced after Easter Sunday. 

CHALLENGE # 1:

 Wow, how easy it was to be religious yesterday.  I mean…..come on…….Christians OWN the ability to be religious twice a year - Easter and Christmas.  We show up - and I mean Show Up in all our finery complete with bonnets, new dresses, pantyhose, and spray tans.  We show up at Christmas with our Pinterest goodies, our sweaters, and our gifts.  We truly know what Jesus came for and what He did for us.  Sure, we are putting on a show on the outside on holidays - but inside, the majority of us are truly appreciative of God’s son…..of His birth……His life as an example for us……..His teachings……..His death…….and His resurrection.  All that is so easy to glorify and worship and honor when we put all the bells and whistles on it and call it Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.

Here’s the challenge, though.  Can we carry it over to today?  Can we simply sit at a stop light and…..instead of changing the radio station or checking our IPhone…..can we think of the glory of the empty tomb and feel our eyes water TODAY?  The day after we are taught to think of it?  Can we muster up that feeling of GLORY knowing that God reached down and CHOSE US to be his followers?  And here’s an even bigger challenge…….the one that I think is the most important…….the one that God meant for us to take away from all of this……..

Can we wash feet between Easter and Christmas?

  Can we realize what He wanted us to do?  Can we do it?  Can we GO BEHIND THE SCENES of all the commercialism of religion and be the Feet Washers that are so desperately needed today? 

CHALLENGE # 2: 

          I love what Mel Gibson and Roma Downey can do for the movie industry.  They actually can bring God to Hollywood - what a challenge.  I know Mel has his problems - but we all do - so get over yourself.  Remember what he brought to us through The Passion of Christ?  I sat in that movie theater and it was not only ME that was mesmerized, but I was with an entire room of people who wouldn’t EVEN THINK of taking a bite of popcorn or a slurp of ICEE while that movie was playing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  You don’t get that very often!!!  There was ABSOLUTELY NO MOVEMENT in that theater during that entire movie!!!!  WOW!!!!  One of the parts of that movie that really, really, really stuck with me - Yes, the actor that played the freaky demon in the crowd still haunts me, but let’s not go THERE - the part that touched me was Mary, His momma.  Remember the scene where she was watching her baby boy beaten and abused and ripped apart and nailed to a cross…….and she was flashing back to His childhood……Him being a little boy- her little boy - complete with scrapped knees and tears.  Then 33 years after she loved Him into the world, she had to have the strength to love Him out of the world and back to where He belonged - beside God. 

          Then yesterday, I was blessed to watch another actor play Mary at the play, No Ordinary Man in Kingsport.  WOW - what a blessing.  The actress who played Mary was kneeling in front of the cross where her son was hanging, bleeding, suffering, dying - KEEP IN MIND - IT WAS FOR US!!!!! - and she had to watch it!!!  When they brought Him down from the cross, they placed His head in her lap and let her love Him and cry for Him and thank God for choosing her to be his momma.  CAN YOU IMAGINE THE STRENGTH????????  What a woman!!!!

          We as women have many challenges in life.  We have to deal with the fact that we can clean our house from top to bottom - walk out of the room for 5 minutes - return to a BIG OLD MESS!!  We have to go to the grocery store and spend $250.00 on groceries then realize in three days that there is no food in the house.

 We have to raise teenagers - I don’t need to say anything else here.

 We work hard for our family, for our jobs, for our churches, for EVERYBODY.  We go to bed worn out.  We wake up and threaten the lives of anybody that gets between us and our coffee pot.  We go, go, go, go, go.  We do, do, do, do, do.  We are Marthas!!!  But my challenge is to have the strength of Mary.  What she endured…..what she lived through……what she saw……How she loved…….Wow.  I challenge myself to have a small amount of her strength.  To get through this life COMPLETELY REALIZING that this is all temporary - This is not Our Home - that the end has been written for us in the Good Book.  . 

There are my challenges - To wash the feet of those I can.  To have the faith and the strength to get through this life knowing I can live for eternity.  To quote somebody I love…..  “I read the end of the book…I know how it ends…God wins”