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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....
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A Mind-Blowing Friday

Good Friday. The day that doesn’t make sense.

Like her urgent phone call the week before to pray for life, for the rhythm of a pulse.

Or her words across the dinner table over the steady hum of an oxygen tank, as the rays of the evening sun filtered through the big glass door. “I don’t know what I would do without faith in this season.”

All week I have struggled with words, because I can barely even grasp the edges of His ways.

And Good Friday is covered with the shadow of death.

Like two thousand years ago when darkness was winning.

Like this week when cancer was winning and kidneys were failing.

And funerals were happening. And the phone call was filled with silence because words disintegrate in the midst of grief.

And the valley, the shadow--it’s twofold. Because the valley implies the mountain peak. And the shadow implies the light.

And Good Friday implies Sunday. And the empty tomb implies a risen Saviour.  

And if death doesn’t make sense to us, neither does eternal life. Neither does the death of a perfect man.

It’s simple: His propitiation for our sins. But redemption, it’s mind-blowing.

Because the gospel compares to no other narrative. It’s a truth like no other. It has nothing to do with us. We can’t bring it down to our level, box it up, and explain it in bullet points.

It’s simple, but it doesn’t make any sense.

Death is hard to understand. But the love of God--that’s harder. The salvation of mankind--it’s absurd, it’s ridiculous, it’s unfathomable.

And thanks be to God, it’s true.

And thanks be to God, Sunday’s coming.

And thanks be to God, one day the shadow will be gone for good.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” 1 Peter 1:3-4

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