In preparation for Easter…
It’s 4:00 P.M. and you suddenly remember that this was supposed to be the day that you were to leave work early to pick up your child from school at 2:45. But instead you sit squashed up next to an overly chatty carpool neighbour with less than acceptable breath and one on the other side who insists on lighting up inside a car that could easily give birth it’s so full. Your guts wrench tighter and tighter at every red light. You think horrible thoughts about the potential disasters which have befallen your child whose been doing who knows what on the school playground for well over an hour now. You wonder, not so quietly, whether these drivers have ever gone so slowly. You can just see the headlines: “Parents found negligent in child abuse case”.
All of those early morning prayer meetings, small group studies, extra services and church work you cram kicking and screaming into an already nightmarish schedule seem a mockery right now. You had hoped that, if nothing else, by sheer good attendance God might tip the scales in your favour and perhaps cut you some life changing wisdom – the kind that would help you not to be so criminally absent minded!
To make matters worse you realize that it was your turn to type up the minutes from the last Strata Association meeting, which, coincidentally, was tonight, mere minutes after you’ll sweep up your cold, bewildered child off the playground. Hopefully nobody suspects you for the insanely stupid person you feel like inside. Driving home from the playground, a totally carefree child now safely in tow, you’re mentally cataloguing every microwaveable item you have in the house. Perhaps if you linger for a few extra minutes in thanksgiving prayer God will add just a little food value to the popcorn (there‘s the vegetable), tater tots (the starch) and homemade milk shakes (and, there’s the dairy) your ecstatic children will ingest for their dinner.
Furthermore, to add insult to injury, wasn’t this going to be the year that, instead of blindly handing out the chocolate Easter eggs, you were going to read key Bible verses reminiscent of this season of Christ’s passion? What a way to convey your passion for Christ and for your family, right? You’d had such high Martha Stuart hopes for Easter time and yet you feel more like Erma Bombeck, or God forbid, Woody Allen.
It’s 12:10 A.M. Exhausted, you turn out the lights from a day of self-inflicted mishaps and sociopathic anxiety. A voice comes in the quiet just before sleep and whispers, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” And it occurs to you, that’s the point isn’t it?
Easter.
Jesus came to seek out the weak, the forgetful, the exhausted, the worried, the chaotic. The empty tomb means that God is loose in the world; loose in your crazy, mixed up world. Can you hear the knocking, even over the din of your anxiety-ridden life? If so, answer the door.
God will most surely enter.
innerwoven 
Even with the remaining lull of holiday brain and body, the just beginning to ramp up soon to become insatiable time gobbling schedule, even with a false sense that it can’t be that bad… I read your post and tears prick at my eyes. That is my life (most days) and as I approach this Easter, I’m met with the choice of dropping my involvement with choir because of a pending soccer tournament for one of my kids and I feel like CRAP. I mean, what kind of God seeking, Jesus honouring woman would do THAT??? Yet, the reality remains… my life seems to be squeezing him out while I allow other things (yes me, allowing it) to fill in the void. He knocks, and I… well, I yell from the kitchen, hang on a minute would you!!! Crap. Time to let him in and have a chat about things.
Thanks Rob.
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Grace, grace, all is grace. Put another way by Julian of Norwich: “all is well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”
Peace…God’s got this, R
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i would like to offer a signed permission slip for all humankind.
you are allowed to stop. and do. less.
as a mother of four with lots of mommy-friends, i recently had someone tell me that her husband explained that all American Mothers run their children around from baseball-practice-to-homework-to rushed- dinner-to-bed. My friend is from another country and is constantly in conflict about the fury of her life and the deep desires of her heart to live more intentionally. I believe she told me this hoping to have me validate her own craziness or to grant her a reprieve because she wasn’t an American Mother (technically). Could she get a pass card?
I say yes. Yes, she can.
when I read this post, and many of its kind, I am reminded of the grace that God has given our family countless times in the last few years where we have been prevented from crazy schedule making (finances and time). Even while living in one of the meccas of materialism in California, i have not felt even slighted able or desiring of the running ragged life that so many are addicted to (detachment).
i am only speaking what has been true for our family and absolutely not of my own design. It doesn’t make sense. i am an extrovert. i have four children. i am social beyond social. i finished a masters program. my husband has worked nights for most of our marriage. i lead things. i am creative. i talk too much. how did i get from crazy to content?
God has spoon fed me scriptures over the years that didn’t even make sense at the time. scriptures like this:
1 Thessalonians 4: 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
God breathed this path for our family and I am grateful for the ways we have been able to live simply and slowly.
we stand in this place together. tugged and tempted at every turn to spin our wheels and our souls into oblivion. i think this places of deep unrest and tears in our eyes are naming something at our root system.
let the Easter season be a season when we let God dig out our roots and plant us in new soil… rich and abundant in grace and goodness and patience.
shalom
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Amy, you’ve touched upon the scourge of our age, busy-ness. Everything we’ve constructed for our benefit and/or comfort has become so scary and hungry that it has turned around and is happily feeding on us. Relationships are replaced with quick email and/or blog conversations – not unlike this one. Worship is replaced with entertainment and quiet is replaced with noise. We never give ourselves the permission to stop and listen. It’s not that our busy lives are necessarily evil in and of themselves. But they are indicative of that which is taking center stage ahead of the calming whispers of the Holy Spirit.
Peace…no, really, Rob
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