On the Cross...

As Easter approaches, I can't help but rejoice and grieve over the life giving reasons this holiday exists.  I want nothing more than to put myself on a temporary pause until Easter Sunday has passed because it would take that amount of quiet to truly grasp what it all means.  For me.  For my marriage.  For my kids.  For the screaming out in pain and flinching world.  For the cancer invading people's insides everywhere we turn.  For those leaning in to learn more about this concept of Christianity.  Easter is to be cherished and lamented in deep ways from deep, often dark places.  The Easter bunny can't stir up the heaviness of sin and resurrection and brokenness and healing.  Candy filled eggs don't speak to nails through hands, spit on his face and boulders rolled away from his tomb.  When I need to wrap my mind around concepts as intricate as Easter, I turn to my woman crush, Ann Voskamp's, blog... Anne says... And our God is not a God to merely believe, but to experience, not to only believe in, but be held by. A God who not only breaks for you — but breaks with you, a God to not only have creeds about —  but to have communion with, a God who not only who dies for you, but who cries with you, the God who touches you and binds you and blesses you and heals you and re-members you because He let Himself be dismembered and He is the God we not only believe in— but we know. We know – know beyond a shadow of doubt, death or despair. He has touched our tears. He has cupped our broken hearts with His scars. He has whispered to the howl, “I know, I know. And I’ve come to begin the making of all things new.” We believe. Because we know. He knows our grief. We know His goodness. And the truth is – we don’t need an explanation from God like we need an experience of God. And that is exactly what we get. We get that experience of God when He stretches open His arms on that Cross and cries, “For you. For all your regrets and for all your impossibles, for all that will never be and for all that once was, for all that you can’t make right and for all that you got wrong, for your Judas failures and your Peter denials and your Lazarus griefs, I offer to take the nails, the sharp edge of everything, and offer you Myself because I want you, to take you, you in your wild grief, you in your anger and your disappointment and your wounds and your not-yet-there, you, just as you are, not some improved version of you, but you – I came for you, to hold you, to carry you, to literally save you.”