where do I start?...

It's been too long for me to try to sum up the past month of my life...so I won't. Suffice it to say that I have been through quite possibly the darkest season of my soul yet. The loss of my friend couldn't have come at a worse time (in my human judgement, of course). I was already feeling the sting of confusion and the jaws of doubt nipping at my heals. The night before I found out about his passing, my wife and I were venting our frustrations with God...his distance and silence. I felt as though I was hanging by a thread to begin with when I heard the heart-rending news of his death. It was like I was laying in a hospital bed nursing my wounds when someone walked in and punched me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. I felt dispised and rejected, smitten of God and afflicted. It almost felt like it "pleased the Lord to crush me." Sounds a little like Isaiah 53, hugh?

I think that's why this last week was special to me. I thought much of the Passion of Jesus. The road he walked. The loneliness he felt. The abandonment. The reproach. The weight of depravity. As I walked with him toward the cross, I felt as though my pain was being transfered to his shoulders, the cross he carried, my own. I felt bad for him. I could picture him inviting me to lay it on him and then wincing under the weight when I finally took him up on his offer. The way his eyes squeezed shut under the burden of it all started breaking me.

I really wanted to come close to the cross and stay there a while, letting it sink in. Letting it permeate my being and my not being. Letting it rush into the places that were sealed but for a needle hole of access. Letting it drown the doubt and disallusionment. Letting it ignite the wet wood of my damp soul. Letting it moisen and soften the parched ground crying for rain. And that is what occured. As sure as my fingers are softly pressing these keys, the very blood of Christ ran over me like a rushing river...soothing, cleansing, refreshing, invigorating, RESURRECTING. My heart was liberated from the tomb of death and brought back to life this last week. The pain is still there of course...sometimes sharp, sometimes dull...but it's coated with some sweet salve of "salve"ation.

I mulched my landscaping this last weekend...I even put in a new mulch bed that took nearly two yards of mulch in and of itself. I labored for hours covering the old with the new and then stepped back to survey the product of my labor. It was stunning, if I do say so myself. Jesus did this to me this last week. He re-mulched me. It feels good to say that.