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The moment afterTuesday, April 6, 1999
John 20:15
"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
This is not my daily habit. Often I settle down with the newspaper or the TV. It's easy and available. Hanging out with Jesus is more complicated. I don't see him sitting beside me. He doesn't poke me in the arm and say, "Let's talk." There is no button on the remote that punches up the Jesus channel. But when all that is done I do finally go to bed. "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep." I may not have recognized Jesus in much of the rest of my day, but I am happy to lie down in his arms at night, to be rocked gently to sleep in the awesome unconditionality of his warmth and love. T.S. Eliot wrote, "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." If that's true, then St. Paul must have been talking about the moment after my world ends when he wrote, "His strength is made perfect in my weakness. When I am weak, He is strong." Lord, let me rest in your world, not the one of my own making. |
At the end of a long day I can settle down with Jesus and talk to him about my life. I can tell him, and he will listen, about the good moments and the bad ones. There are victories, sometimes, and defeats, and lots of in-between. Jesus listens to it all.