Live courageously from your heart!
What is Easter to you? What are you doing for Easter?
Could you imagine Jesus wandering onto the scene of an Easter egg hunt or seeing excitement around Easter baskets? Easter is not about coloring eggs, kids hunting for them, Easter baskets or even enjoying a big meal with friends and family. It can include these things, but Easter is about the death and resurrection of Jesus!
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. The day after spending some much needed time with family and those I love, a day where I continue reflecting on the things I am thankful for and a day where I avoid the insanity of the Black Friday crowds with intentionality.
Having the day to myself, I am quickly reminded of all the things I need to do around the house, so with a pencil and paper I begin to write out that list. After a couple of hours of working my way through the list I begin to lose focus wanting a change of pace, so I grab the remote and start navigating the online cable guide stumbling upon The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Being a big fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, it really didn’t take much convincing myself to put aside my to-do list and watch the movie. I know it’s a lame excuse, but it’s the one I’m going with.
It doesn’t matter how broken you are or how desperate your situation is, God can heal you and put all the scattered pieces of your life back together. He knows your deepest needs, dreams, struggles, fears and regrets. He knows how deeply you are hurting and is desperately waiting to start the restoration process. His grace is greater than all the junk in our life, and His amazing love will overfill the deep void of all of our longings. He knows you.
Remember the movie the Lion King? Remember when Simba checks out and runs as far away as he could in the other direction? He forgot who he was. A transformation happens when Simba looks into the water and his reflection becomes the face of his father Mufasa. Here are the words that are exchanged between father and son.
Life is like viewing the backside of a tapestry. It appears to be nothing more than a jumbled mess and nothing really makes sense. No wonder we give up, lose heart and forget who we are.
But things are not always what they seem for when you turn the tapestry over you can see the astonishing beauty of what God is doing your life. The truth is that we don’t see what God sees, but He occasionally gives us a glimpse at what He is weaving into the fabric of our lives.
“When I was eight,” confesses Brennan Manning, “the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered, ‘Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know.’” (Excerpt from John Eldredge, Wild at Heart)
I had lived behind a mask watching people labor through life’s difficult circumstances with an empty compassion; never offering much grace. With a distorted myopic view of my present reality, I chose to see people going through the motions of life expecting sympathy without any hope of a new tomorrow. I had convinced myself that they followed some scripted destiny with hopeless desperation. My perspective was so distorted.
