Then What Are You Going To Celebrate?

I love Easter. It's long been my favorite holiday. We haven't really put any umph into celebrating it since we got married and started our family. I'm not really sure why. I'm mean if you aren't going to celebrate the conquering of sin and death and the triumph of good over evil then what are you going to celebrate? Anyway, we decided this year that we had gone long enough without celebrating the greatest event in human history and it was time we did it up a little around here. So we put on our Sunday best, filled some baskets with delectable goodies and beloved little notions, threw a ham in oven and some other yummies on the stove top, hid some plastic eggs and gathered together with family to party like it was AD 33.

Of course no human party could ever be party enough to be worthy of what our Savior did for us on those blessed days so many years ago and what He is still doing all around us as He works so masterfully to make all things new in this broken world that He redeemed on that day. But He knows that. That is what is Easter is about partly...Jesus knowing what it means to be human. He knows that when we humans are happy about something we throw a party. I know Jesus enjoyed a good party.

We are really happy around here that God loved this world even though it was full of sin. That He loved us humans even though we hated him. We are happy that He sent His Son down here to live among us. To know what it is like to be frail and small and weak and surrounded by loud and fearsome temptation. We are happy that His blessed Son lived perfectly among us, knowing all of our temptations but never once giving in to them. We are so humbled and happy that this sinless Man, God's own Son, laid down and died at the hands of sinful men for the sin of the world. For our sin. For our sin upon sin. And we are really happy that this Prince of Life didn't stay dead, but rose from the dead three days after His beautiful sacrifice crushing the power that death and evil have over the world and that since we believe in him we are no longer subject to those terrible tyrannts. We have a new King. A good King. A King who is making all things new. We are really, really, really happy about that. So today we had a long overdue party to celebrate.

And for me it was my best Easter ever...

Well, except for maybe that one seven years ago when this man among men...

...took me to the top of a mountain at sunrise and gave me this:

God Makes People Mad All The Time.

If you like making people mad this post is not for you. I know there are people in the world who do like making people mad and they need someone else to speak into their lives because all I would say would be "Hey, stop making people mad. It's making me feel uncomfortable." And really how helpful is that?

If, however, making people mad makes you miserable -- welcome to my world. I hate making people mad. I hate disappointing people. I hate burdening them or annoying them. These are some of the worst feelings I can think of and ones that I avoid at many costs. Earlier this week I realized this is something that I avoid at too many costs.

I was "playing" outside with my girls on a beautiful morning. Actually I was ignoring them and brushing off their excited comments so I could focus on doing something that was a total waste of time and that I wasn't even enjoying. Why? Because someone (who is not a regular reader of my blog nor a family member and so probably not you) had suggested it to me and I knew if I didn't finish by that afternoon they would find out and know I hadn't taken their suggestion.

All of a sudden (probably after shushing one of my kids or saying "Oh nice." and not even looking up at the dirt mound they had built) I asked myself. "Why the heck am I still doing this?" and before I had time to contrive a good reason I answered myself (Yes, that IS what crazy people do.) "So I won't make {REDACTED} mad."

Wow. And I had to admit that was the whole reason I was doing it. Not another reason at all was even contributing to it. Because I didn't want to risk disappointing someone I was neglecting the important for what in this case was utterly pointless. Ouch.

And then I had the most liberating thought I have had in a while. God makes people mad all the time. He is perfect and He is good and He is kind and He IS love and yet he manages to make millions of people angry every single day. I place a high value on how much what I do will please or displease others. It was huge epiphany for me to realize that in this way I was not sharing God's values. When Jesus was on Earth he made people angry too. He made them angry enough to kill him. I let whether or not something will anger or disappoint someone be the deciding factor in whether or not I do a lot. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say I do that all the time. That's not what Jesus did.

I thought I was thinking of others by not wanting to make them mad, but in reality I was thinking of myself. I wasn't trying to prevent the suffering of others I was trying to mitigate my own discomfort by making sure by whatever means I felt necessary people were rarely displeased with me. My avoidance of the anger of others is nothing like godliness. It is definitely not Christlike. At root it is selfishness and one thing I know about selfishness is that it makes everything worse.

So where do I go from here? Start making people mad on purpose? Stop considering at all how my actions will affect others? No, of course not. As Sissy would say, "Thas not kind!" As Afton would say, "Now you're just being wacky." I think I need to stop dressing up my own self-protective tendencies like they are sacrificial love and learn to really love sacrificially the way Jesus did. His unselfishness, love, and willingness to sacrifice are unmatched in history but he was not afraid of the anger of men. I think the more I grow to be like Him the less afraid of it I will be as well.

and hear the angels sing!

And ye, beneath life's crushing load

Whose forms are bending low,


Who toil along the climbing way


With painful steps and slow,


Look, now! for glad and golden hours


Come swiftly on the wing


O rest beside the weary load


and hear the angels sing!



IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR
Edmund H. Sears

The Throne of Grace

"for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is -- limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death -- he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played them man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it all well worth it.

~Dorothy Sayers
Letters to a Diminished Church

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have on who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Hebrews 4:15 & 16