Even when it seems like the people of God are dormant and we start to wonder if we are all alone, God is still loving. He even speaks in Babylon. He even moves amongst the darkest nights. The world might not be going all that well, but God is still God, and as we get a glimpse of Him, He is still revealed as glorious and majestic and wise and holy and sovereign. 

All the while, I am all too aware, that the reality of the world and my experience of it is now, in front of me, making up the substance of my life through a series of present tense happenings, or as Annie Dillard famously and rightly said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”  Said another way, our life is the net result of billions of “nows” where we have the opportunity to be present to reality, and we also have temptation to escape it by looking longingly, or loathingly, either forward or back.

I love the thought of a God who is prepared to get His hands dirty, to work in the soil of the world, at a task that others don’t really want to do, in order to preserve and promote beauty and flourishing in the world. What a humble King we have in Jesus, one who could be mistaken for a gardener.

As you prepare for Holy Week, it is helpful to remember how Christ Himself prepared for Gethsemane. I can tend to believe that Jesus went to the cross with curses on His lips and frustration in His heart, but nothing could be further from the truth. Though His anguish was indescribable, and His agony unlike any before or since, what came from His mouth was praise for His Father in the form of a song of faith. A song about what is true of God in the midst of deep suffering. A song still true for us today.

Go to counseling. Say “sorry.” Say “I forgive you.” Try to mean it.
Go to counseling again. Repeat.

As recipients of the gospel, we are able to take our hurts to a God who understands pain and so we don’t have to carry it around forever, with the constant risk that one day it will flare up and hurt us or those around us, or both. 

Every single day is an opportunity from God to revel in the love of the son of David. Don’t miss out through pretense.

Every single day is an opportunity from God to marvel at the extraordinarily ordinary means of grace that God gives us in the presence of fellow image bearers. Don’t miss out through judgment.