Category Archives: Holidays

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Resurrection & Life

One lone daffodil blooms in my yard. Bright yellow tulips will soon follow as they gloriously lift their heads in spring’s emergence. Just weeks ago the honeyed scent of almond blossoms marked its beginning. Newness is here, again.

The spring season unfolds as plants awaken to living and growing. We observe its miracle. The refrain is as familiar as it is repetitive. We’re living it too. We are born, grow, learn, and produce. Then all too soon we are looking back instead of forward.

We marvel at the miraculous. Cycles come and go – and we come and go with them. Life hails from beginnings to endings. Employment starts, then ends. We stretch to achieve, then ride the wave. We try new things, then leave them behind. We plant, grow, and harvest, in season and out.

Easter tells of a holy resurrection that happened during the season of new beginnings and fresh starts. Jesus came, lived, taught, and died. Everyone was talking about it. But the grave could not hold Him. Jesus Christ arose to life, victorious over death.

In the little things we see the big things. How fruit matures after a season of growing is like how a person overcomes and then reawakens. Everyone overcomes. This includes those difficult parts we seldom talk about. Life cycles in a form of death and then rebirth.

Jesus went from death to life that we might have life in Him, which is why we sorrow, then celebrate. His death, then life. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” If there were not life in Christ, what good would the way and truth be? Life in Christ is the essence of the resurrection.

Christ gives hope in the hard times, help in the uncertain times, and love in the dark times. We emerge stronger in our beings having gone through the valley experience.

My friend lost her home in the Camp Fire, but she has gone on to experience community in another place. God has helped her with this unwelcome, unforeseeable journey. She rebirthed physically. She is also a child of God. She is born again spiritually.

Lives are made joyous through the living Lord. Wait for the resurrection from loss to life during troublesome times. Live the resurrection life. Rejoice. Sing the Easter song.

Happy Resurrection Day!

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New Year, Fresh Start

Reflections on 2020

As I write this, the date is December 31, 2020. People are asking what we’ve learned during this strangely odd year of 2020. More than learning, I would say we have grown in our insights on how to endure.

We have gained understanding for what the refugee may feel, how the incarcerated may feel, the “in-need-but-doing-without” may feel, and with a greater respect for the way depression alters outlook when it slows the ability to “be” present. Strong people have admitted to being depressed this year.

We have gained understanding about our human need for inclusion, interaction, activity, sharing, touching, being together, giving, and helping. Simply put, we humans need each other.  We are also more aware of our own mortality, our fragility, and our sense of being one isolated person of many socially distanced isolated people. We’ve empathized to a greater degree than we have in the past.

We have known people that are suffering, serving in the medical front lines, people who’ve died of the Covid or complications, famous people, ordinary folk, friends and family. Everything is upside down: schools, businesses, vacations, travel, employment, entertainment and so forth. Four hundred businesses lost in Butte County alone this year. That’s a lot of people hurt and people sadness. We’ve sympathized with others to a broader degree in many respects than we’re used to.

It’s been quite a year. Besides the racial tension, BLM and the defund the police movements, the Covid-19 traumatizing virus—which has changed life as we knew it, there is the other grand 2020 player, the political trauma and biases, which has isolated whole blocks of people who now feel disenfranchised, disregarded, and hated for their beliefs or who they voted for, by the other half of the populace.

This undercuts who we are as a free people in a free land.

Aspirations for 2021

What is the solution? Do we just carry on? I believe we must do more than just “carry on.” We must reach higher. All of us could help, love, and care more. We could look beyond our own wants, to provide safety, inclusion, grace, kindness, and life in our own communities and beyond.

We can dig deeper. We can aspire to more.

This is the 2021 challenge: Aspire to >more, >better, and >best. No excuses.

But how can we do this? I have five suggestions:

    • One, we start being the leader, and we stop being the judge.
    • Two, we do what we can to put a bright spin on things, and we stop being a sour voice about the things that we can’t change, anyway.
    • Three, we trust the future to God–He knows what He is doing–and we don’t give up doing what we are called to do.
    • Four, we do the next best thing, whatever that is. You keep reaching forward, instead of remaining on pause.
    • Five, we make it a habit to praise God for what is happening personally, inter-personally and intro-personally, socially, nationally, and internationally. That should about cover it.

“Do for,” even if they don’t do for you back. Pay it forward, and pray it forward.

I’m aspiring to having a better 2021. I don’t want another year like 2020, it was especially hard on my emotions. I’m going to reach forward. In fact, I’m already thinking of ways to make it better so I’m doing more than just enduring. I’m going to be thriving. How? I’m going to be engaged in moving forward, and to not being overwhelmed and stagnated by the difficulties. It’s a mind game, as it always is. It’s also a trust in God game, as it always is. . . .

I’ll keep you posted.

. . .

Photo by Chris Barbalis, Unsplash