Wineskins Contributor・03/31/18

I’ve been thinking a lot about a lot of things this week because I’m a deep thinker, but also because it’s Holy Week. I’ve been in a week of learning, relearning, and creating new pathways for my brain to replace the old negative ones. Thoughts from PTSD/OCD can control someone to a place they don’t even recognize themselves anymore. That was me not so long ago. Put it this way, it was the same month we are in. It’s apropos that my healing is taking place this week, and I find it very meaningful. I’ve thought about Jesus a great deal. I’ve pondered at great lengths whether HE had a say in how things ended up. These are my own theological wonderings; not trying to look for or find debate. I’ve also thought about how HE could have lived a much, much longer life and healed and loved even more people. I’ve never thought of this in my whole life until this week. What if HE had been over 100 years old when HE died? Why so young? I don’t know, and I won’t know for certain as a finite human being. Couldn’t the story have been extended? GOD could’ve given HIM many more years to live, teach, heal, and give. HIS life was cut short. And yes, I suppose I’m questioning that. Wouldn’t it have been awesome to have a 969-year-old Methuselah-channeling Jesus? Think of just how many more folks HE could have touched, literally and metaphorically.Guess what? My questions may matter to my brain, but ultimately the ultimate happened when I wasn’t even a blink in my mother’s eye…when my ancestors were multiple generations removed from me. Herein is the point entirely. Our questions can float around like bobbers on a fishing line, but the greatest and most phenomenal act of love occurred without our help. GOD did what GOD does which is let the world GOD made unfold as GOD designed. This is my belief, anyhow. And the unfolding, for whatever reason, had to happen with GOD’s Son crucified and bleeding and dying on a cross. This makes no logical sense. This is why I don’t like it. Why couldn’t Jesus have grown old, helped 1,000 times more people in the flesh, then died quietly and peacefully…and still saved us? I don’t get it. But guess what? It doesn’t matter that I don't understand.Enter the bold and brave Faith onto the stage. Faith means ‘who really cares if we don’t get it’. We are humans. We aren’t going to get it. Faith is ‘we don't know why, we don’t know how, and we don’t really like Jesus dying in pain on a cross, but we have to sit with it anyway’. It happened, we honor it, and live our lives to honor HIM. But no it doesn’t make logical sense. Faith says, ‘Rest. It’s okay. You don’t have to or need to ‘get it’. Just be grateful.’ And I’m so grateful beyond all measure today. Because HE left the garden, where HE was mingled within the olive trees in that green, serene space. HE left the beauty for the burn. HE left the calm for the crisis. HE left the peacefulness for the pain….for you.