In His Image.
What does it mean to be made in His image?
Are there scars upon my brow, or was it sculpted to don a crown of thorns? Was my side made to accept the spear? Were my hands created to receive the point of a nail? Or are there scars to show they were there?
No.
My wounds were healed before I had them. My sins forgiven without a memory of their occurrence. And yet I bear a cross daily. I still suffer a small portion for my responsibility in my sin. Yet He endured to insure my survival, my freedom.
What is the image of God?
He is perfect. Am I? No.
Can I be? Only when He perfects me. Perfection is a process.
Isn’t it odd how the crown of thorns, when we picture it on His head, seems to fit so well, even having been pushed down upon His head? As though the thorns were grown to fit His brow alone? As though, because of His great love for us, His very flesh knew He took it willingly?
Did the nails pierce His hands and feet and separate the tissues as though they were meant to be there?
I see His pain, and I wonder at His endurance, and then I find His peace.
Like Thomas I doubt Him, and I doubt what I see and what I touch. Every part of my life is a process of eliminating my doubt. I am shown repeatedly that I am loved, that I am cared for, and because of this I discover that while His crucifixion is a daily occurrence in my life, so is Easter, and all I can ever hope to be is His image.
A mere reflection.
A shadow.
For only Christ is Truth and Love Incarnate.
The sad fact of the matter is that even though God has done so much, I still try to take it back. While God’s word on the issue is final, because it is indeed “finished”, I keep trying to do it over until “I get it right” once and for all. I don’t want to be the cause of His pain because I am convinced that His sacrifice leaves me in His debt, and I can’t stand that! I hate debt! I hate obligation! Why? Because it forces me to admit my incredible, all consuming need for a Savior.
“by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
So do not come to me for comfort in your pain for I stand useless in shock, in horror, in awe and in love at His sacrifice. I have no words that would be adequate to match His actions on our behalf. Only His open wounds can fulfill our need, and He is waiting for us to touch them. The greatest joy in Easter is that He is greater than all the pain of my sins to kill him. Every wound He took is one more I don’t have to bear.
And what that proves, in the end, is that there is not enough blood in my veins to cover the sins of the world.
©Dan Bode 2004
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
One Last Breath
One last breath.
Everyone has one.
That final exhalation that marks the demise of our physical form.
The moment that often defines the historical impact of an individuals’ entire life.
How many deathbed quotes have you heard or read about? It seems as though every historically famous figure has been documented as having some profound last words that usually define their entire life. This leads me to think that I’ll have to come up with something really cool to say for myself, only because I’m secretly worried that the only comment I’ll have is something about a water stain on a ceiling tile or something.
The thing is; we cannot rewrite our personal history with one sentence. Our last words will not redefine our lives in the eyes of those who know us. We cannot undo all of our mistakes at the end. We leave what we leave.
There are no “do overs”.
And yet we have hope.
When we give ourselves to God we do not merely give what we are, but also what we were, and what we can be. Each of these is influenced by who or what we give them to.
Christ is the Lord of everything, including our past. The influence of our past has a much different impact on our present, and our future, when we allow it to be seen in the light of His forgiveness.
My last breath will know His love, regardless of the words carried upon it.
But that’s just me.
My last breath will have no eternal impact for anyone else.
The last breath of Christ was the final mortal exhalation of divine breath on this earth.
In that one agonized cry He gave the words, “It is finished.”
And while it may not have been loudly spoken, it was very clearly heard.
Those three words were the clarion call of Heaven, and the death knell of Satan!
His last words were the beginning of my life, and what made me complete.
The curtain was torn! The door was opened!
His last words were just the beginning for you and me.
“It is finished!” John 19:30
These words indicate the end of a process.
It means Christ knew when He had suffered enough.
He was saying that the process was now, in this very moment, complete! Somehow, by means completely beyond any human capability to understand, God had a divine equation by which He determined what amount of suffering would be enough to save us. Not only did He know, but it was all determined by Him. There was a point that He would not go beyond, because only He was the one to determine the process by which we would be redeemed. God determined the end point because Satan could not be allowed to have the last word in the process. Satan could not be allowed to be in any semblance of control.
Christ had a reason for living and dying when, where and how He did it. It is imperative for us to understand that He did it by His own choice. His only motivation was His love for us, not any threat of Satan nor any human claim of independence. Every single aspect of my salvation is provided by Christ because He chose to give it.
We have always underestimated the willingness of God to sacrifice for us, and just as surely underestimated our need to sacrifice for Him.
“Into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Luke 23:46
Satan could only look over his shoulder in shock and fear in his new found understanding that he had not taken Christ’s life after all. Christ gave it up willingly in His own time.
Satan never understood the rules. His failure was already determined.
Satan has always been completely aware that we are not worthy of God’s attention, but he was always just as unaware of the lengths God would go to make up for our lack. It was for exactly this reason that God determined the appropriate method to give us the qualities necessary to make us worthy. There was nothing we could do to earn it, and nothing Satan could do to keep it from us.
Nothing is ever free. Someone always pays a price.
And so Easter begins with Christ’s last breath,
which becomes my first breath of heaven…
©2011 Dan Bode
Everyone has one.
That final exhalation that marks the demise of our physical form.
The moment that often defines the historical impact of an individuals’ entire life.
How many deathbed quotes have you heard or read about? It seems as though every historically famous figure has been documented as having some profound last words that usually define their entire life. This leads me to think that I’ll have to come up with something really cool to say for myself, only because I’m secretly worried that the only comment I’ll have is something about a water stain on a ceiling tile or something.
The thing is; we cannot rewrite our personal history with one sentence. Our last words will not redefine our lives in the eyes of those who know us. We cannot undo all of our mistakes at the end. We leave what we leave.
There are no “do overs”.
And yet we have hope.
When we give ourselves to God we do not merely give what we are, but also what we were, and what we can be. Each of these is influenced by who or what we give them to.
Christ is the Lord of everything, including our past. The influence of our past has a much different impact on our present, and our future, when we allow it to be seen in the light of His forgiveness.
My last breath will know His love, regardless of the words carried upon it.
But that’s just me.
My last breath will have no eternal impact for anyone else.
The last breath of Christ was the final mortal exhalation of divine breath on this earth.
In that one agonized cry He gave the words, “It is finished.”
And while it may not have been loudly spoken, it was very clearly heard.
Those three words were the clarion call of Heaven, and the death knell of Satan!
His last words were the beginning of my life, and what made me complete.
The curtain was torn! The door was opened!
His last words were just the beginning for you and me.
“It is finished!” John 19:30
These words indicate the end of a process.
It means Christ knew when He had suffered enough.
He was saying that the process was now, in this very moment, complete! Somehow, by means completely beyond any human capability to understand, God had a divine equation by which He determined what amount of suffering would be enough to save us. Not only did He know, but it was all determined by Him. There was a point that He would not go beyond, because only He was the one to determine the process by which we would be redeemed. God determined the end point because Satan could not be allowed to have the last word in the process. Satan could not be allowed to be in any semblance of control.
Christ had a reason for living and dying when, where and how He did it. It is imperative for us to understand that He did it by His own choice. His only motivation was His love for us, not any threat of Satan nor any human claim of independence. Every single aspect of my salvation is provided by Christ because He chose to give it.
We have always underestimated the willingness of God to sacrifice for us, and just as surely underestimated our need to sacrifice for Him.
“Into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Luke 23:46
Satan could only look over his shoulder in shock and fear in his new found understanding that he had not taken Christ’s life after all. Christ gave it up willingly in His own time.
Satan never understood the rules. His failure was already determined.
Satan has always been completely aware that we are not worthy of God’s attention, but he was always just as unaware of the lengths God would go to make up for our lack. It was for exactly this reason that God determined the appropriate method to give us the qualities necessary to make us worthy. There was nothing we could do to earn it, and nothing Satan could do to keep it from us.
Nothing is ever free. Someone always pays a price.
And so Easter begins with Christ’s last breath,
which becomes my first breath of heaven…
©2011 Dan Bode
Friday, April 8, 2011
Believing
“I’ll be back in three days.”
That was the essential truth of Christ’s final night with His disciples, even though He’d told them before. They had all been with Him for the better part of three and a half years. They knew His personal habits, His quirks, His personal preferences in His day to day activities. He always spoke truth even when unpleasant, and this time was no different from any other in that respect. He was telling them that the “Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”(Mark 8:31)
So He told them the truth, but what if they had really believed Him when He first told them? How would their lives have been different?
I think it’s fairly obvious they didn’t believe His statement. If they had believed, Peter would have had no need to deny Him three times that night. Thomas would not have needed to touch His sundered flesh, or reach inside the gaping hole in His side. It was essential, I think, for them to see Christ still alive in spite of the wounds He still retained. He was not a healed risen Lord. He lived in spite of the wounds inflicted on Him outside of the constraints of human flesh. Organs were torn apart. They could not function. Yet He lived. God provided life even in the face of death as the only possible result of these wounds.
If they had truly believed Christ from the beginning they would never have needed to lock themselves away in fear of the authorities. If they had believed they would have had no fear of anything.
But the other half of the equation is simply this: Since they did not believe their ultimate subsequent faith was strengthened by the conceptions it had to overcome. They had to finally and completely understand that God was able and willing to overcome human limitations for their sake, because in the end they would need to do the same.
If they had really believed Him they would have understood His sacrifice. They had to see death conquered from the human side.
Assuming His victory would have rendered it meaningless.
Suddenly, what Christ had been telling them became reality. There was no sense of symbolism, or metaphor. There was no sense of ceremony, or fantasy.
One reality had been replaced by another that was completely outside of their experience.
They had always said they believed, but they knew what they had seen.
They saw the blood and pain. They saw the cross. They knew there was no coming back from what they, being human, knew to be final.
They knew what they saw with their own eyes, and they knew it was true. Up to that point they only believed in themselves and the knowledge they had accumulated during their lifetimes.
Their unbelief provides the contrast between what we have, and what we need.
That is the difference between stated belief and actual belief.
Between stated faith and actual faith.
Between fantasy and reality.
Between the life we want to live, and the life we actually live.
It is a decision to live up to a certain potential.
The decision to live as a potential hypocrite, or a potential martyr.
Each way of life has the potential to lead to either way of death whether you are called specifically to it or not.
We tend to think that the disciples had about three and a half years to figure it out, but it was really only three days.
They had three days to figure out if they were going to live by what He said was true, or continue to live life based on the failure of their own beliefs in fear of man. Because everything He had said and done was leading up to that period after His death.
There was one thing that the disciples got right about Jesus.
They understood that Jesus was going to do Something Big that they didn’t have to do anything about.
They weren’t doing anything and they were ok with that.
They didn’t mind that Jesus was going be the front man in a revolution (they thought). The last thing they wanted was to be on the receiving end of the first blow struck.
When they thought they knew what was coming they didn’t mind following what they believed in, because they still believed in themselves.
When Jesus was doing what they thought He was doing, they were happy.
It was when He left the path they thought they had been on that they weren’t so sure about their own actions anymore. I think they looked back on their actions over the previous three years and said to themselves,
“Maybe we’ve been stirring the wrong pot after all.”
The First Communion occurred before the Crucifixion.
When Christ broke the bread, He knew the pain of His broken body. (“This is my body, given for you…”)
When He poured the wine did He knew the blood He would shed. (“This is my blood…which is poured out for many..)
Since this came prior to the Crucifixion it is no wonder then that the disciples were so thoroughly confused.
They thought they were celebrating the Passover; a ceremony commemorating their survival. What was this talk of betrayal and death?
How could this pinnacle of the most significant week of their lives turn so quickly into what it did, particularly in light of His entrance to Jerusalem just the week before?
And then, against all expectation, He died.
But then He rose.
It was, again, the last thing they expected.
I can just imagine them thinking:
“He spends all this time speaking in parables and then goes literal on us?!”
Look at the contrast of their lives before and after their belief.
When Peter saw Him on the shore after He had risen he jumped in the water to swim to shore rather than wait for the boat. The minute he entered the water I think he yearned to break the surface just so his eyes could rest on Him again. When his feet touched the stones on the shore he felt nothing, for his need to see the Living Christ overwhelmed the need for any other comfort.
They preached openly in spite of the opposition of the authorities they originally hid from. They endured prison and torture. They joined the ranks of Hebrews “great cloud of witnesses” because they ultimately believed Him to the exclusion of all others, receiving the faith He offered.
Judas actively betrayed Him, and Peter actively denied Him, but both the betrayal and the denial had the same effect of cutting them off from God. These are important events, but I think the more important issue is that someone returned. I have to wonder which was the greater sorrow to Jesus; that Judas betrayed Him, or that Judas never gave Christ the chance to forgive him?
Faith is a gift of God; belief is a choice of man.
His gift is giving us Someone to believe in.
Faith in Christ means that we should believe everything He believes about us. He believes we are worth much, and because He made it so we must know that it is true. The logic is inescapable, yet we’d much rather see ourselves as worthless. It’s easier to accept our own failure when we don’t have to see how far we’ve fallen. It’s easier to be a victim than it is to take responsibility.
It’s easier in our own mental condition to say “Oops.”, and just move on than it is to acknowledge the pain we’ve caused someone else and ask forgiveness, in addition to asking Him to save us as well.
“Lord I believe. Help my unbelief!” He has overcome the greatest obstacle to my belief by conquering death, so the greater my faith has the potential to be.
In so many ways it all boils down to the difference between the words “say” and “do”.
Every day I make a determination about what I believe. I make a choice about what actions I will take in light of my Christian beliefs, and I make a choice to defy those beliefs as well.
This is the point of my sin.
The professions I make with what I say and what I do are often entirely different. Sometimes it may even be questionable even when my words and actions match simply because my motivations for those actions are known only to God and myself.
The struggle is completely internal, and usually unseen.
The disciples couldn’t keep any secrets from Christ. They weren’t getting away with anything when they sinned. Christ knew what they expected of Him, and He went so far as to tell them what they could expect of Him. They simply failed to understand it, or perhaps more accurately they chose to understand it in the way they wished it to be.
The disciples, just as we ourselves, learned to live by their own version of the truth.
And so it happens that the disciples and I have a great deal more in common than I would like to admit. I often wonder if the disciples were chosen solely as examples of the potential failures in our human condition that lead to the conflicts of faith that we all experience.
They made the choice to follow Him, and then despite having all their sins identified in His presence, they made the choice to stay as well.
Why?
When my natural tendency is to run from anyone who would identify my shame, why would they stay with Him?
Christ pursued the disciples. He approached them and said “Follow me.”
And if they are examples of human failings, they are also examples of saving Grace.
They are examples of the result of succumbing to the relentless pursuit of the Holy.
I am like them in my failings, but I am as much like them in the potential of what I can be, because the Source of strength involved, and its purpose, are the same.
Why do I stay?
Grace.
Forgiveness.
Mercy.
I stay, because He stays.
He came back for me!
And for that reason alone I can say on Easter with full conviction…
I Believe!©2008 Dan Bode
That was the essential truth of Christ’s final night with His disciples, even though He’d told them before. They had all been with Him for the better part of three and a half years. They knew His personal habits, His quirks, His personal preferences in His day to day activities. He always spoke truth even when unpleasant, and this time was no different from any other in that respect. He was telling them that the “Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”(Mark 8:31)
So He told them the truth, but what if they had really believed Him when He first told them? How would their lives have been different?
I think it’s fairly obvious they didn’t believe His statement. If they had believed, Peter would have had no need to deny Him three times that night. Thomas would not have needed to touch His sundered flesh, or reach inside the gaping hole in His side. It was essential, I think, for them to see Christ still alive in spite of the wounds He still retained. He was not a healed risen Lord. He lived in spite of the wounds inflicted on Him outside of the constraints of human flesh. Organs were torn apart. They could not function. Yet He lived. God provided life even in the face of death as the only possible result of these wounds.
If they had truly believed Christ from the beginning they would never have needed to lock themselves away in fear of the authorities. If they had believed they would have had no fear of anything.
But the other half of the equation is simply this: Since they did not believe their ultimate subsequent faith was strengthened by the conceptions it had to overcome. They had to finally and completely understand that God was able and willing to overcome human limitations for their sake, because in the end they would need to do the same.
If they had really believed Him they would have understood His sacrifice. They had to see death conquered from the human side.
Assuming His victory would have rendered it meaningless.
Suddenly, what Christ had been telling them became reality. There was no sense of symbolism, or metaphor. There was no sense of ceremony, or fantasy.
One reality had been replaced by another that was completely outside of their experience.
They had always said they believed, but they knew what they had seen.
They saw the blood and pain. They saw the cross. They knew there was no coming back from what they, being human, knew to be final.
They knew what they saw with their own eyes, and they knew it was true. Up to that point they only believed in themselves and the knowledge they had accumulated during their lifetimes.
Their unbelief provides the contrast between what we have, and what we need.
That is the difference between stated belief and actual belief.
Between stated faith and actual faith.
Between fantasy and reality.
Between the life we want to live, and the life we actually live.
It is a decision to live up to a certain potential.
The decision to live as a potential hypocrite, or a potential martyr.
Each way of life has the potential to lead to either way of death whether you are called specifically to it or not.
We tend to think that the disciples had about three and a half years to figure it out, but it was really only three days.
They had three days to figure out if they were going to live by what He said was true, or continue to live life based on the failure of their own beliefs in fear of man. Because everything He had said and done was leading up to that period after His death.
There was one thing that the disciples got right about Jesus.
They understood that Jesus was going to do Something Big that they didn’t have to do anything about.
They weren’t doing anything and they were ok with that.
They didn’t mind that Jesus was going be the front man in a revolution (they thought). The last thing they wanted was to be on the receiving end of the first blow struck.
When they thought they knew what was coming they didn’t mind following what they believed in, because they still believed in themselves.
When Jesus was doing what they thought He was doing, they were happy.
It was when He left the path they thought they had been on that they weren’t so sure about their own actions anymore. I think they looked back on their actions over the previous three years and said to themselves,
“Maybe we’ve been stirring the wrong pot after all.”
The First Communion occurred before the Crucifixion.
When Christ broke the bread, He knew the pain of His broken body. (“This is my body, given for you…”)
When He poured the wine did He knew the blood He would shed. (“This is my blood…which is poured out for many..)
Since this came prior to the Crucifixion it is no wonder then that the disciples were so thoroughly confused.
They thought they were celebrating the Passover; a ceremony commemorating their survival. What was this talk of betrayal and death?
How could this pinnacle of the most significant week of their lives turn so quickly into what it did, particularly in light of His entrance to Jerusalem just the week before?
And then, against all expectation, He died.
But then He rose.
It was, again, the last thing they expected.
I can just imagine them thinking:
“He spends all this time speaking in parables and then goes literal on us?!”
Look at the contrast of their lives before and after their belief.
When Peter saw Him on the shore after He had risen he jumped in the water to swim to shore rather than wait for the boat. The minute he entered the water I think he yearned to break the surface just so his eyes could rest on Him again. When his feet touched the stones on the shore he felt nothing, for his need to see the Living Christ overwhelmed the need for any other comfort.
They preached openly in spite of the opposition of the authorities they originally hid from. They endured prison and torture. They joined the ranks of Hebrews “great cloud of witnesses” because they ultimately believed Him to the exclusion of all others, receiving the faith He offered.
Judas actively betrayed Him, and Peter actively denied Him, but both the betrayal and the denial had the same effect of cutting them off from God. These are important events, but I think the more important issue is that someone returned. I have to wonder which was the greater sorrow to Jesus; that Judas betrayed Him, or that Judas never gave Christ the chance to forgive him?
Faith is a gift of God; belief is a choice of man.
His gift is giving us Someone to believe in.
Faith in Christ means that we should believe everything He believes about us. He believes we are worth much, and because He made it so we must know that it is true. The logic is inescapable, yet we’d much rather see ourselves as worthless. It’s easier to accept our own failure when we don’t have to see how far we’ve fallen. It’s easier to be a victim than it is to take responsibility.
It’s easier in our own mental condition to say “Oops.”, and just move on than it is to acknowledge the pain we’ve caused someone else and ask forgiveness, in addition to asking Him to save us as well.
“Lord I believe. Help my unbelief!” He has overcome the greatest obstacle to my belief by conquering death, so the greater my faith has the potential to be.
In so many ways it all boils down to the difference between the words “say” and “do”.
Every day I make a determination about what I believe. I make a choice about what actions I will take in light of my Christian beliefs, and I make a choice to defy those beliefs as well.
This is the point of my sin.
The professions I make with what I say and what I do are often entirely different. Sometimes it may even be questionable even when my words and actions match simply because my motivations for those actions are known only to God and myself.
The struggle is completely internal, and usually unseen.
The disciples couldn’t keep any secrets from Christ. They weren’t getting away with anything when they sinned. Christ knew what they expected of Him, and He went so far as to tell them what they could expect of Him. They simply failed to understand it, or perhaps more accurately they chose to understand it in the way they wished it to be.
The disciples, just as we ourselves, learned to live by their own version of the truth.
And so it happens that the disciples and I have a great deal more in common than I would like to admit. I often wonder if the disciples were chosen solely as examples of the potential failures in our human condition that lead to the conflicts of faith that we all experience.
They made the choice to follow Him, and then despite having all their sins identified in His presence, they made the choice to stay as well.
Why?
When my natural tendency is to run from anyone who would identify my shame, why would they stay with Him?
Christ pursued the disciples. He approached them and said “Follow me.”
And if they are examples of human failings, they are also examples of saving Grace.
They are examples of the result of succumbing to the relentless pursuit of the Holy.
I am like them in my failings, but I am as much like them in the potential of what I can be, because the Source of strength involved, and its purpose, are the same.
Why do I stay?
Grace.
Forgiveness.
Mercy.
I stay, because He stays.
He came back for me!
And for that reason alone I can say on Easter with full conviction…
I Believe!©2008 Dan Bode
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Splash of Blood
I was walking to work one day, and I noticed something on the sidewalk. I had actually seen it before, but never attached any significance to identifying it.
It was a stain left by some dark liquid that had splashed and dried. There was a trail of drops leading away from it back up the sidewalk for a few feet where it ended. It was interrupted by a footprint that cut across the trail. I had seen it for a few days prior to this, but in my hurry to get to my desk each morning I had given it almost no thought. Why today it caught my eye I have no idea, but as I passed it again this day I noticed the color of the substance. It was a deep, reddish brown.
I stopped in shocked realization that I was looking at blood!
How many people had walked past or over it every day and given it no notice? How and why had this that had passed through someone’s veins been so haphazardly spilled? It was no small amount. If I had a wound that allowed that great a loss I would surely seek help with it. There was no way to tell how this occurred, and yet my mind called up violent images that seemed unavoidable. How could blood be spilled after all without violence in such a public place without edge or forceful impact? And then I had to ask how having spilled could it be so easily ignored, as I had in fact done? How could I not have seen it for what it was?
It had to follow, of course, that my thoughts would lead me to Someone else’s blood, also shed with violence, but violence that ended in glorious purpose. And just as so many of us had walked over this splash on the sidewalk, how many have waded through rivers of the stuff that rage across our lives grasping for our attention only to be studiously ignored in an effort to maintain our self determined path at cross purposes to the Truth? What does it take for God to get my attention?
Just who am I living for anyway?
In the process of the Hebrew sacrificial rites that ended when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, one of the final acts was the pouring of the “drink offering”. Thus Paul, when he felt his death was near, wrote that he was being “poured out as a drink offering” (2Tim. 4:6). But just as Christ was the final sacrifice, so His blood is the final blood shed for our redemption, as He said at the last supper , “Drink from it all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt. 26:27b-28) And yet as final as that act is the flow continues at whatever rate is necessary to cover the sins of this world, for where sin is grace abounds.
What all this means is that we must let go, dive in, “go with the flow”, drowning and dying to live again.
And it all started one night long ago in Jerusalem.
Satan called upon Death, his most powerful weapon, to finally put a stop to the machinations of grace which Christ had begun. Death was a warrior at whose feet everyone had ultimately fallen. Death took Christ up in his giant fist and began to squeeze the life out of Him.
This Blood, this stuff of eternal life began to flow one drop at a time.
The whip scourges the smooth skin of Christ’s back.
Drip.
Death is confused by this sudden pain he has never felt before, caused by the touch of the blood of this Lamb.
The crown of thorns is beaten down upon His brow.
Drip.
Death begins to squeeze harder and harder trying to stanch the flow.
The nails are driven through Christ’s wide open hands.
Drip. Drip.
His body is taken down from the cross.
Death has used up all his strength to vanquish the enemy of Hell.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The stone is rolled away.
Death collapses, defeated, destroyed, a useless and empty husk.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Death has himself died, and from his lifeless grasp Christ has risen!
“O death, where is your victory?”(1Cor. 15:55)
Thomas places his doubting fingers in Christ’s open wounds.
Dripdripdripdrip….
The apostles live and die for the life He gave them.
Dripdripdripdripdripdripdripdripdrip…..
And as every river starts with just a trickle so this trickle becomes a torrent raging across time that no force of darkness can ever hope to stop, divert or slow.
“…this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many…”
He left a trail of blood that you can miss only after you have seen it first, and actively choose to turn away, but the Word was made flesh and He refuses to be ignored!
God could never again be relegated to the back of our minds as a mere “concept” anymore. He created a hallowed ground in every human heart; a holy of holies where only He can tread. His presence there suddenly made one thing obvious:
A choice must be made.
Always a choice.
Live or die.
You have a 50/50 chance of survival if you’re merely looking at the odds, but if you choose life it’s a 100% guarantee.
It seems a simple choice, but we make it difficult when we think we have a lot to lose. We try to hang on to what we have by shedding our own blood to pay the price for our freedom, but all I have is as nothing against the payment of this debt. And the only thing I have to show for my efforts are the scars left from where I’ve ironically slashed my own wrists trying to save myself.
Every year we celebrate Easter. Like many other things the true purpose of this occasion has been overshadowed by meaningless customs involving eggs, chocolate bunnies and new hats.
But some of us will remember.
I tend to look at it as two distinct events; His Passion and His resurrection. In reality I should see them as one. His death and resurrection were a single process that qualified Him as the complete sacrifice once and for all. Both events had to occur in order for His life to be enough to tip the scales in my favor.
Some only see the inside of a church at Christmas and Easter, and I suppose if you are only going to come twice a year those are the times for it. But I have to wonder if you aren’t hearing the same message both times.
At Christmas you hear the announcement of the angelic host:
He Lives!
Throughout Christ’s entire life on earth He prepares us for the show of strength that only He could perform. The one thing we take most for granted in Christ’s existence. For the Point of Easter, the Bottom Line, the Final Act is really the same that we hear at Christmas.
The inevitable conclusion of Christ is this same angelic message at Easter:
He Lives!
And as we come and sit on the banks of this never ending river of cleansing, bloody Grace, as we begin to comprehend that the supply never runs out we realize:
He Lives!
©Dan Bode 2005
It was a stain left by some dark liquid that had splashed and dried. There was a trail of drops leading away from it back up the sidewalk for a few feet where it ended. It was interrupted by a footprint that cut across the trail. I had seen it for a few days prior to this, but in my hurry to get to my desk each morning I had given it almost no thought. Why today it caught my eye I have no idea, but as I passed it again this day I noticed the color of the substance. It was a deep, reddish brown.
I stopped in shocked realization that I was looking at blood!
How many people had walked past or over it every day and given it no notice? How and why had this that had passed through someone’s veins been so haphazardly spilled? It was no small amount. If I had a wound that allowed that great a loss I would surely seek help with it. There was no way to tell how this occurred, and yet my mind called up violent images that seemed unavoidable. How could blood be spilled after all without violence in such a public place without edge or forceful impact? And then I had to ask how having spilled could it be so easily ignored, as I had in fact done? How could I not have seen it for what it was?
It had to follow, of course, that my thoughts would lead me to Someone else’s blood, also shed with violence, but violence that ended in glorious purpose. And just as so many of us had walked over this splash on the sidewalk, how many have waded through rivers of the stuff that rage across our lives grasping for our attention only to be studiously ignored in an effort to maintain our self determined path at cross purposes to the Truth? What does it take for God to get my attention?
Just who am I living for anyway?
In the process of the Hebrew sacrificial rites that ended when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, one of the final acts was the pouring of the “drink offering”. Thus Paul, when he felt his death was near, wrote that he was being “poured out as a drink offering” (2Tim. 4:6). But just as Christ was the final sacrifice, so His blood is the final blood shed for our redemption, as He said at the last supper , “Drink from it all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt. 26:27b-28) And yet as final as that act is the flow continues at whatever rate is necessary to cover the sins of this world, for where sin is grace abounds.
What all this means is that we must let go, dive in, “go with the flow”, drowning and dying to live again.
And it all started one night long ago in Jerusalem.
Satan called upon Death, his most powerful weapon, to finally put a stop to the machinations of grace which Christ had begun. Death was a warrior at whose feet everyone had ultimately fallen. Death took Christ up in his giant fist and began to squeeze the life out of Him.
This Blood, this stuff of eternal life began to flow one drop at a time.
The whip scourges the smooth skin of Christ’s back.
Drip.
Death is confused by this sudden pain he has never felt before, caused by the touch of the blood of this Lamb.
The crown of thorns is beaten down upon His brow.
Drip.
Death begins to squeeze harder and harder trying to stanch the flow.
The nails are driven through Christ’s wide open hands.
Drip. Drip.
His body is taken down from the cross.
Death has used up all his strength to vanquish the enemy of Hell.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The stone is rolled away.
Death collapses, defeated, destroyed, a useless and empty husk.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Death has himself died, and from his lifeless grasp Christ has risen!
“O death, where is your victory?”(1Cor. 15:55)
Thomas places his doubting fingers in Christ’s open wounds.
Dripdripdripdrip….
The apostles live and die for the life He gave them.
Dripdripdripdripdripdripdripdripdrip…..
And as every river starts with just a trickle so this trickle becomes a torrent raging across time that no force of darkness can ever hope to stop, divert or slow.
“…this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many…”
He left a trail of blood that you can miss only after you have seen it first, and actively choose to turn away, but the Word was made flesh and He refuses to be ignored!
God could never again be relegated to the back of our minds as a mere “concept” anymore. He created a hallowed ground in every human heart; a holy of holies where only He can tread. His presence there suddenly made one thing obvious:
A choice must be made.
Always a choice.
Live or die.
You have a 50/50 chance of survival if you’re merely looking at the odds, but if you choose life it’s a 100% guarantee.
It seems a simple choice, but we make it difficult when we think we have a lot to lose. We try to hang on to what we have by shedding our own blood to pay the price for our freedom, but all I have is as nothing against the payment of this debt. And the only thing I have to show for my efforts are the scars left from where I’ve ironically slashed my own wrists trying to save myself.
Every year we celebrate Easter. Like many other things the true purpose of this occasion has been overshadowed by meaningless customs involving eggs, chocolate bunnies and new hats.
But some of us will remember.
I tend to look at it as two distinct events; His Passion and His resurrection. In reality I should see them as one. His death and resurrection were a single process that qualified Him as the complete sacrifice once and for all. Both events had to occur in order for His life to be enough to tip the scales in my favor.
Some only see the inside of a church at Christmas and Easter, and I suppose if you are only going to come twice a year those are the times for it. But I have to wonder if you aren’t hearing the same message both times.
At Christmas you hear the announcement of the angelic host:
He Lives!
Throughout Christ’s entire life on earth He prepares us for the show of strength that only He could perform. The one thing we take most for granted in Christ’s existence. For the Point of Easter, the Bottom Line, the Final Act is really the same that we hear at Christmas.
The inevitable conclusion of Christ is this same angelic message at Easter:
He Lives!
And as we come and sit on the banks of this never ending river of cleansing, bloody Grace, as we begin to comprehend that the supply never runs out we realize:
He Lives!
©Dan Bode 2005
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Ash Wednesday
The ashes of Your entry
Lie cold upon my brow.
The Sacrifice once made,
Is so quickly forgotten
Even as your glory burns before me.
Smoke by day and fire by night
I swear I will not forget and yet,
And yet as I walk the path
And see the charred remains of past ambitions
And tyrannical needs
I find myself walking on my own power,
And not on Yours.
My memory fails, and so
The sacrifice must be made once again.
My horror at the pain You feel as the consequence
Of my sin is suffered once again.
I stand in awe at Your resurrection, once again –
And I am reborn.
©Dan Bode 1999
Lie cold upon my brow.
The Sacrifice once made,
Is so quickly forgotten
Even as your glory burns before me.
Smoke by day and fire by night
I swear I will not forget and yet,
And yet as I walk the path
And see the charred remains of past ambitions
And tyrannical needs
I find myself walking on my own power,
And not on Yours.
My memory fails, and so
The sacrifice must be made once again.
My horror at the pain You feel as the consequence
Of my sin is suffered once again.
I stand in awe at Your resurrection, once again –
And I am reborn.
©Dan Bode 1999
Sunday, February 27, 2011
The Joy of Discovery
We started our little excursion with great expectations. We were eagerly anticipating the excited exclamations over all the new experiences to come.
My wife and I were given the opportunity to take our then 11 month old granddaughter Kaya to the zoo for the first time. We thought that the variety of the animals would consume all of her attention, and that she would thrill to the sites of all the exotic places represented in the confines of the zoo.
We were wrong.
At our house she is fascinated by the dog and the cat.
I think it’s probably fair to say the fascination is not necessarily mutual. While our dog seemingly can’t get enough of her, the cat tends to quietly walk (or run) the other way when she approaches her. There at the zoo she saw animals like the giraffe, the tiger, monkeys, snakes, flamingoes, and even the rear paw of a lion who was wisely lounging in the shade of a rock in the 103 degree heat. They used to have a hippo, which was kind of fun to watch when they fed it, but I think it died several years ago and they haven’t put anything else in its pen. How do you tell when a hippo is dead anyway? Does it actually go belly up like a goldfish, or does it just float there like it does when it’s alive? Something to ponder. Anyway, I suppose the heat had something to do with Kaya’s lack of appreciation as well; it certainly sapped a lot of our enthusiasm.
Instead, when she was given the opportunity to choose her own object of interest, she sat down on the ground and picked up a dried leaf. She stared at it in fascination for a few moments and then proceeded to bring it toward her mouth for a taste test. I’m relatively confident that she has a discerning enough palate that she would have grimaced and spit it out, but you never really know at that age so my wife deftly intercepted it before she reached her goal.
In retrospect I suppose we should have expected this. She was at a stage in her development where she was more acutely concerned with what was immediately within her reach. The dog and the cat are within her reach; the giraffe and the screaming monkey were not.
It seems as though we often have an appreciation of simple things only when we first discover them, or when know we are about to lose them forever.
The beginning or the end.
The first flush of passion in a relationship puts our entire life plan in a new light. By the same token, the end of that relationship will often cause us to make terribly unwise decisions that we only recognize as unwise in hindsight.
When we find ourselves in a situation that we dislike our tendency is to berate ourselves (or someone else depending on how well we accept personal responsibility) for the actions we took that put us there instead of dealing with the situation as it is.
Over the years as Kaya has grown I have watched her develop in ways that I knew would eventually happen, but astound me even though I expect them. When she was two she had a different point of view.
On a typical drive home for my daughter Jennifer, and Kaya they were just driving along talking about whatever came to Kaya’s mind. She was talking about some trees. Jennifer asked, “How big were they?”
Holding her hands up above her head as high as she could Kaya replied,
“They were THIS big!”
And then, with her hands still in the air, she looked to the side and asked,
“Do trees have armpits?”
Jennifer laughed, and I laughed when she told me about it. But then I started to think about it a little.
Do trees have armpits?
My immediate and automatic response is “no”, but how do I know this? Just because I never thought to ask the question doesn’t automatically mean it’s not so. I can’t recall anytime in my life in which I’ve heard the words “trees” and “armpits” in the same sentence.
So who am I to say “no” definitively?
So I did some research.
We have a sycamore tree in our front yard that I planted several years ago. It has grown well and quickly, but I’m going to have to cut it down and plant another one. I didn’t plant it correctly and now I have a lot of surface roots, and surface roots on a tree that can grow to 30-40 feet tall right in front of my house is not a good thing. Anyway, it has a lot of low branches that are perfect for just this kind of research. I went out to the front yard, at night, after looking around carefully to make sure no one was watching, and I sniffed the tree right where the branch joins the trunk. It smelled like I would expect a tree to smell; kind of green, and woody. Definitely woody.
I smelled another part of the tree at the trunk. It was the same.
Next I went to that source of information that everyone knows is absolutely ironclad in its accuracy: the internet.
I actually found several references to the armpits of trees, but they were used figuratively by artists in their description of a tree. No one really identified a tree armpit as an actual thing.
Regardless, I don’t think I will ever look at the point where the branch of a tree meets the trunk in the same way ever again.
Kaya is now three and a half, and her dialogue has taken another turn.
In another discussion with her mother she stated,
“I think when God made me it was like a puzzle for Him.”
“What do you mean?” asked her mother.
“I mean that when God put me together it was like putting a puzzle together.”
I’m pretty sure when I was three and a half I NEVER got philosophical about the process of my creation.
It occurs to me when she says something new that she is in the process of discovery. She sees it all with new eyes. No matter how many times she sees something, or how much she actually knows about it, she seems to sense that there is still something about it that is new to her. There is still some mystery left in everything, but I, in my adult “wisdom”, have chosen to focus only on what I know instead of pursuing what I don’t know. In doing so I have remained safely rooted on the “solid” ground of my own knowledge. I have effectively clipped my own wings. I have bound myself to man’s earth and denied myself the heavens.
Jesus said, “Behold I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5). This is the same line that we Christians only read occasionally and rarely ever apply. It takes a crisis of major proportion to bring us to the point where we see the old as new, and the sunrise as original as the sunset. My granddaughter is fascinated with dried leaves, and yet it takes space probes to Mars and beyond to hold my attention. I cannot make a leaf or a blade of grass, and yet the process of its growth only concerns me as far as my need to rake it up or mow it down. Even closer to home is my own body. I abuse it regularly, but I take little heed from my doctor when he tells me what I need to do to care for it properly, and it is such an incredible wonder of creation!
And I can’t be the only one to realize at moments like this that in the end I really have no ability to create anything at all. The only skill man has is to manipulate what has already been created. We certainly have the ability to warp and abuse this creation, and we do so regularly to our shame, but really create? No. The simple fact that we exist as created beings means that we cannot create something out of nothing, because we ourselves are created. The title of Creator can only be applied to the one who was there first, and that is God alone; the First and Last, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.
We are only stewards of what is.
There are things to wonder at all around us, but our preoccupation with “progress” and “forward” thinking causes all of them to be ignored, left to lie haphazardly in our destructive wake, and leaves us in a related state of ignorance.
Once discovered, how can I ignore the reality of what He sets before me?
It may seem as though this indicates some special divine attention to my life, but that is not so. He gives the same attention to each of us, and I am loved by Him no more than anyone else, but just as certainly no less. He loves each of us with His whole being; for when we are told “God is Love” it means that He is Love. He is the only source of it. It is who He is.
It is when my pursuit of His presence takes an active note in my life that I begin to see things more clearly, because a relationship with Him requires my active participation, just as He has actively put me in this world. It is my responsibility to move in this life rather than sit and wait for my inevitable death. I cannot sit and do nothing while I am pinned beneath the boulder of my doubts. What holds me back must be let go, done away with, cut off. Amputation is never pretty whether it’s done in the wilderness or on the surgeon’s table, but it is often necessary for survival. The truth of the matter is that a relationship with Christ is a transaction: You give Him all of you, and He gives you more than you could ever be on your own, and more than you ever even thought to want.
The process of discovery, as I recognize all that He puts in front of me, is His method of showing me His active, daily presence.
This is where I discover the gap in my life.
This is a gap that even the love of God will not cross.
It is the gap of my own choice.
That choice is the most important thing that Christ has given me. It is the only thing that allows grace to save me from His wrath, for while God is love He is also just, and in His justice He demands that all debts be paid by me, or by Him.
And I myself am wholly incapable of settling that debt.
And so the process of discovery, while usually worked out at the beginning or the end, really should be a continuous practice that starts at the beginning and never has an end. It has eternal potential depending on our choice.
Christmas is the offer, Good Friday is the payment, Easter is the redemption, and His flowing blood is the currency of my survival.
My choice of Him seals the transaction in my favor.
The Choice, beloved (for you are His beloved), is yours.
©2008 Dan Bode
My wife and I were given the opportunity to take our then 11 month old granddaughter Kaya to the zoo for the first time. We thought that the variety of the animals would consume all of her attention, and that she would thrill to the sites of all the exotic places represented in the confines of the zoo.
We were wrong.
At our house she is fascinated by the dog and the cat.
I think it’s probably fair to say the fascination is not necessarily mutual. While our dog seemingly can’t get enough of her, the cat tends to quietly walk (or run) the other way when she approaches her. There at the zoo she saw animals like the giraffe, the tiger, monkeys, snakes, flamingoes, and even the rear paw of a lion who was wisely lounging in the shade of a rock in the 103 degree heat. They used to have a hippo, which was kind of fun to watch when they fed it, but I think it died several years ago and they haven’t put anything else in its pen. How do you tell when a hippo is dead anyway? Does it actually go belly up like a goldfish, or does it just float there like it does when it’s alive? Something to ponder. Anyway, I suppose the heat had something to do with Kaya’s lack of appreciation as well; it certainly sapped a lot of our enthusiasm.
Instead, when she was given the opportunity to choose her own object of interest, she sat down on the ground and picked up a dried leaf. She stared at it in fascination for a few moments and then proceeded to bring it toward her mouth for a taste test. I’m relatively confident that she has a discerning enough palate that she would have grimaced and spit it out, but you never really know at that age so my wife deftly intercepted it before she reached her goal.
In retrospect I suppose we should have expected this. She was at a stage in her development where she was more acutely concerned with what was immediately within her reach. The dog and the cat are within her reach; the giraffe and the screaming monkey were not.
It seems as though we often have an appreciation of simple things only when we first discover them, or when know we are about to lose them forever.
The beginning or the end.
The first flush of passion in a relationship puts our entire life plan in a new light. By the same token, the end of that relationship will often cause us to make terribly unwise decisions that we only recognize as unwise in hindsight.
When we find ourselves in a situation that we dislike our tendency is to berate ourselves (or someone else depending on how well we accept personal responsibility) for the actions we took that put us there instead of dealing with the situation as it is.
Over the years as Kaya has grown I have watched her develop in ways that I knew would eventually happen, but astound me even though I expect them. When she was two she had a different point of view.
On a typical drive home for my daughter Jennifer, and Kaya they were just driving along talking about whatever came to Kaya’s mind. She was talking about some trees. Jennifer asked, “How big were they?”
Holding her hands up above her head as high as she could Kaya replied,
“They were THIS big!”
And then, with her hands still in the air, she looked to the side and asked,
“Do trees have armpits?”
Jennifer laughed, and I laughed when she told me about it. But then I started to think about it a little.
Do trees have armpits?
My immediate and automatic response is “no”, but how do I know this? Just because I never thought to ask the question doesn’t automatically mean it’s not so. I can’t recall anytime in my life in which I’ve heard the words “trees” and “armpits” in the same sentence.
So who am I to say “no” definitively?
So I did some research.
We have a sycamore tree in our front yard that I planted several years ago. It has grown well and quickly, but I’m going to have to cut it down and plant another one. I didn’t plant it correctly and now I have a lot of surface roots, and surface roots on a tree that can grow to 30-40 feet tall right in front of my house is not a good thing. Anyway, it has a lot of low branches that are perfect for just this kind of research. I went out to the front yard, at night, after looking around carefully to make sure no one was watching, and I sniffed the tree right where the branch joins the trunk. It smelled like I would expect a tree to smell; kind of green, and woody. Definitely woody.
I smelled another part of the tree at the trunk. It was the same.
Next I went to that source of information that everyone knows is absolutely ironclad in its accuracy: the internet.
I actually found several references to the armpits of trees, but they were used figuratively by artists in their description of a tree. No one really identified a tree armpit as an actual thing.
Regardless, I don’t think I will ever look at the point where the branch of a tree meets the trunk in the same way ever again.
Kaya is now three and a half, and her dialogue has taken another turn.
In another discussion with her mother she stated,
“I think when God made me it was like a puzzle for Him.”
“What do you mean?” asked her mother.
“I mean that when God put me together it was like putting a puzzle together.”
I’m pretty sure when I was three and a half I NEVER got philosophical about the process of my creation.
It occurs to me when she says something new that she is in the process of discovery. She sees it all with new eyes. No matter how many times she sees something, or how much she actually knows about it, she seems to sense that there is still something about it that is new to her. There is still some mystery left in everything, but I, in my adult “wisdom”, have chosen to focus only on what I know instead of pursuing what I don’t know. In doing so I have remained safely rooted on the “solid” ground of my own knowledge. I have effectively clipped my own wings. I have bound myself to man’s earth and denied myself the heavens.
Jesus said, “Behold I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5). This is the same line that we Christians only read occasionally and rarely ever apply. It takes a crisis of major proportion to bring us to the point where we see the old as new, and the sunrise as original as the sunset. My granddaughter is fascinated with dried leaves, and yet it takes space probes to Mars and beyond to hold my attention. I cannot make a leaf or a blade of grass, and yet the process of its growth only concerns me as far as my need to rake it up or mow it down. Even closer to home is my own body. I abuse it regularly, but I take little heed from my doctor when he tells me what I need to do to care for it properly, and it is such an incredible wonder of creation!
And I can’t be the only one to realize at moments like this that in the end I really have no ability to create anything at all. The only skill man has is to manipulate what has already been created. We certainly have the ability to warp and abuse this creation, and we do so regularly to our shame, but really create? No. The simple fact that we exist as created beings means that we cannot create something out of nothing, because we ourselves are created. The title of Creator can only be applied to the one who was there first, and that is God alone; the First and Last, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.
We are only stewards of what is.
There are things to wonder at all around us, but our preoccupation with “progress” and “forward” thinking causes all of them to be ignored, left to lie haphazardly in our destructive wake, and leaves us in a related state of ignorance.
Once discovered, how can I ignore the reality of what He sets before me?
It may seem as though this indicates some special divine attention to my life, but that is not so. He gives the same attention to each of us, and I am loved by Him no more than anyone else, but just as certainly no less. He loves each of us with His whole being; for when we are told “God is Love” it means that He is Love. He is the only source of it. It is who He is.
It is when my pursuit of His presence takes an active note in my life that I begin to see things more clearly, because a relationship with Him requires my active participation, just as He has actively put me in this world. It is my responsibility to move in this life rather than sit and wait for my inevitable death. I cannot sit and do nothing while I am pinned beneath the boulder of my doubts. What holds me back must be let go, done away with, cut off. Amputation is never pretty whether it’s done in the wilderness or on the surgeon’s table, but it is often necessary for survival. The truth of the matter is that a relationship with Christ is a transaction: You give Him all of you, and He gives you more than you could ever be on your own, and more than you ever even thought to want.
The process of discovery, as I recognize all that He puts in front of me, is His method of showing me His active, daily presence.
This is where I discover the gap in my life.
This is a gap that even the love of God will not cross.
It is the gap of my own choice.
That choice is the most important thing that Christ has given me. It is the only thing that allows grace to save me from His wrath, for while God is love He is also just, and in His justice He demands that all debts be paid by me, or by Him.
And I myself am wholly incapable of settling that debt.
And so the process of discovery, while usually worked out at the beginning or the end, really should be a continuous practice that starts at the beginning and never has an end. It has eternal potential depending on our choice.
Christmas is the offer, Good Friday is the payment, Easter is the redemption, and His flowing blood is the currency of my survival.
My choice of Him seals the transaction in my favor.
The Choice, beloved (for you are His beloved), is yours.
©2008 Dan Bode
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