Monday, Day
29 April 3
Reading for today:
Matthew 24:3 - 25:46
The Olivet Discourse from Matthew
I cannot adequately express the difference it has made reading the record of
Jesus’ final weeks on earth through the filter of walking toward his
crucifixion and impending death. When I was initially inspired to create a
40-day spiritual journey with that focus, I didn’t realize how deeply it would
impact me. In fact, that is why I had to change the ultimate focus to Easter
and Resurrection. The weight without the ‘but there is more’ was just too
heavy. I needed hope dangled beyond the grave.
Jesus has taught many times – both to the disciples and to the masses – but in
his final days in this teaching time on the Mt of Olives, it is the disciples
who come to him privately and ask about his prophecy of the temple being
destroyed. That question precipitates his ‘teaching moment’ and, as they sit
around him on the mountainside, he tells them many things that are to come.
He forewarns them that many will come claiming to be Messiah – and not to be
deceived.
A good warning. Many have been
deceived. When I was on the 2006 trip
to Israel, we went into Jordan to see the ancient city of Petra, and as the bus
entered one city on our route, there was a very large sign that said, ‘THERE IS
NO GOD BUT ALLAH. MOHAMMED IS HIS MESSENGER.’ All who follow Allah and believe
Mohammed have been deceived. It breaks my heart, because it comes close to me
in people I love. Theirs is not the only false religion. They are not the only
ones who have been deceived. Jesus warning on the Mt of Olives was nearly 2000
years ago – long before the claims of Mohammed and many others who have
followed. There were false Gods in Old Testament days as well. Satan provides
lots of other diversions to try to keep people from accepting the One True GOD.
They are all deceptions. My dilemma is in finding a way to dispel the darkness.
Lead me, God, through the power of Your Holy Spirit. I love and do not want to
offend – but I want eternal life with You for those I love! Peel away the
layers and grant sight to the blind. Amen.
In this Matthew passage, Jesus talks both about the more imminent destruction
of Jerusalem in 70 A D – and in a second layer, the end of the world – but he
doesn’t delineate specifically between them. It is in retrospect that we see
the layers.
Matthew is the only one who records the story of the ten virgins – one of the examples
given of the kingdom of heaven. Five wise. Five foolish. Five had the
structure; the other five had both the structure and the truth to make the
structure functional. It leaps out at me today that this reflects the church in
its various distinctions as well as more definitively as individuals: those who
only have the form, and those who are full of the ‘oil’ of the Holy Spirit. “Having
a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” comes quickly to mind. This
recognition pierces me. I want to reflect His light! I want to make a difference
to those lost in darkness – and sometimes that darkness is as close as the
decency of a ‘too comfortable’ Christianity that denies Jesus his rightful
place. I will mull this over throughout the day, I am sure!
Matthew is also the only one of the Gospels that tells us the story of the
Sheep and the Goats in chapter 25:31-46.
At the end of time (which many believe is coming very soon) Yeshua, the Son of
Man, will sit on his throne and all the nations will be gathered before him – but
when he separates, it will not be by nations, but by individuals. There will be
people of every nation who believe in Him, accept Him as Savior and are told, “Come,
you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared
for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me
something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a
stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick
and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
In Jesus story, the righteous who stood before Him ask, “When?”
‘The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the
least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” I pay attention to the
reality that he is referring to other believers in this passage: coming
alongside believers who are hurting, hungry, disheartened, alone, homeless,
ill, imprisoned.
I believe it is a logical segue to accept this as a challenge to take help and
HOPE to others suffering from the same deficits...but help without HOPE is
inadequate. When I help it is in
Jesus’ Name, and I need to be clear about that calling. I have not always offered HOPE with
help.
Anyone who only wants to believe in a warm, fuzzy God needs to read this Sermon
on the Mount – the teaching to the disciples on the Mount of Olives so close to
Jesus’ death. Important final
messages. The sheep will be
separated from the goats – his analogy of those divided to go to eternal life –
or eternal punishment. The reality
of a heaven and a hell. We love to think of the former – and prefer to forget
the latter is a reality. We cannot rest securely in our Salvation and disregard
impending terror for all who don’t believe. We have a story to tell. In our going we are to disciple, to
share his story, to share our stories of His grace and redeeming love. May it
be so.
Reality
for today:
Just before the father of an 8-year-old boy was deployed, he sat his son down
to break the news to him.
“Son,” he said, looking him squarely in the eye man-to-man, “I’m going to be
going away for a long time. I’m going to Iraq.”
“Why?” his son asked, “Don’t you know there’s a war going on over there?”
A BONUS ADDITION FOR APRIL 3:
PART OF MY STORY:
My day of sorrow and despair.
I hardly know where to begin – so let’s just try the
beginning and see where this goes.
April 3 is a very tender date for me. A date of memory. We all have them. 9/11 is forever seared into my brain. It was the day my Pollyanna world ended.
April 19, too, for it was on my eldest
daughter’s birthday that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred. I also remember dates of deaths that
line up in an unusual way:
My mother died April 3, 1953; my Grandfather Rice died April 30, 1963; my Dad
died May 30, 1993. (And I believe Jesus died April 3, 33.)
My mother’s death touches me poignantly today. April 3, 1953 was a Friday. I
was 7 ½, a Second Grader at Wilder
Elementary School, Wilder, Idaho. When I got home from school that day my
eldest brother told me he was supposed to take us – the little kids – to our
Aunt Edna’s. He was 16 and didn’t get to take the car by himself all that often
– and certainly not with us as passengers – so this was a big responsibility.
We didn’t even go into the house. We popped into the car and off we went.
What I remember most clearly was the next morning. Since I was the only girl in
our family, I always got a room alone – the best guest room at my Aunt’s house.
My Dad awakened me Saturday morning, and all I can remember him saying was, “I’m
sorry, Lola Mae, but your mother is dead.”
I didn’t want to believe it. But it was true. It was all wrong – and all wrong
that if it were true that the sun was shining and the sky was blue. It was
wrong that the birds were singing and spring was popping out everywhere. I
wanted to scream, “Stop. No. My mother is dead. How can everything look and be
the same?” The reality is, it wasn’t the same.
I cried until I had no more tears left to cry – and then I was just swallowed
up in the sadness that filled every space we entered. We went to my Grandma’s
house (my Dad’s mother) where all the adults gathered and talked in hushed
whispers, and stopped talking whenever one of us kids came into the room. Our
mother had committed suicide. I overheard snippets of what they said. “How
could she do that – leave a husband and four children?” and “Isn’t it awful?”
and “What will he ever do – a man with four kids and no mother to help raise
them?” We were shuffled off to front porches and back yards. They tried not to
talk in front of us, but they had so much to talk about that some of it
inevitably spilled over in our hearing.
In bits and pieces we learned that she had taken my brother’s rifle, put it to
her head, and pulled the trigger.... They conjectured that she waited until she
saw us leave that Friday afternoon, and then she ended her all-too-short life.
She was only 37.
No one ever sat down with me and explained anything. I came to my own conclusion: every mother wants a little girl
– I’d heard people say that many times. I was her only girl, so if I’d been the kind of little girl
she’d wanted she would have stayed. It had to be all my fault. I couldn’t remember anything I had done wrong. Well, except maybe my little brother and
I got into too many squabbles.... But I also knew we played together well most
of the time, and that didn’t seem like enough for her to kill herself over –
so, it must just be me. I didn’t know what I wanted to take back – but I wanted
to take back whatever I had done that must have upset her so badly. I loved her and missed her, and wanted
for all the world to be the kind of little girl she would want to stay and be
mommy to. I wanted normal back.
After the funeral week I went to live with my Aunt Edna in Parma. She was a Second Grade teacher, and
because the administration felt sorry for me, they thought it would be best for
me to be in my aunt’s room. So
that is where I finished 2nd grade. My younger brother went to Caldwell to live
with the ‘fun’ aunt – our Aunt Glee; and the two older boys stayed with Dad.
Dad worked full time during the school year – he was a teacher, too – and my
aunts (his two sisters, Glee and Edna) convinced him there was no way he could
take care of us and do his job. They were probably right.
What they didn’t take into consideration in their generosity is that we not
only lost our mother April 3, we lost each other...well, except for summer.
We all got to be together for the summer – and what a sight we must have been:
ragamuffin kids with poor haircuts, and the toes cut out of our shoes because
we’d grown too much – and clothes that didn’t fit right. It was pretty obvious
we didn’t have a mother to watch out for us – but we were blissfully happy. We
were together.
I have incredibly wonderful memories of the summer of my 7th year. I even
cooked for the hay crew when they did their stint harvesting alfalfa at our
ranch. Fried steak, boiled potatoes and corn. I think they had the same meal
every day. It was the only thing I had learned to cook. But it was edible – and they made me feel very proud for
being able to have their meal ready for them when they came in to eat.
Now don’t get me wrong by what I’ve said about my Aunt Edna. I dearly loved my
aunt – and I dearly loved her husband, Uncle Sam. I called him Uncle Dudley,
and he was kind, gentle, patient, and provided me all the tenderness my aunt
couldn’t. What I realize from this vantage point is that having a ‘surprise’
young child when you only wanted to be mother of one kid was definitely going
the second – third – O K – hundredth mile. She loved me – but loved me best in
smaller doses; and having a little girl in her house at that juncture certainly
wasn’t on her list of what she had hoped for, but all in all we fared well. She
went out of her way to try to train me, and I have amazing memories of the time
I lived with her.
I just think being a ‘good Samaritan’ and helping out her brother may have
stretched her a little further than she’d have preferred. After the summer
ended, everyone thought it was best that the ‘little kids’ go back to their
respective aunties’ houses, and the older boys went to live with Dad. Having me
for 5 weeks or so at the end of 2nd grade was a lot different than a whole
school year.
The biggest problem that year was that Dad moved with the two older boys to
Midvale, and with that move they were too far away for us to see them often:
not just because of distance – but because our Dad’s focus was on ‘finding a
mother’ for us, so he didn’t come around much.
But, the reality is, I was, by nature, a pretty happy little kid. I rolled with
the punches – especially at the time – and dealt with the actual fallout later....
I was very fortunate to have an extended family that truly loved me and
provided stability for me when the world turned upside down. The year I was at
my aunt’s house built the foundation of a relationship that lasted for as long
as she lived – and she lived to be 98.
I didn’t have my 3 brothers near me, but I did have her one and only
son, my cousin – and I loved him, too....
All in all, life was good. I didn’t imagine it otherwise – it is just
that in retrospect, I think to heal well we needed each other, but who knows?
We can’t go back and do it differently, so I’ll just accept the blessings that
were there – and there were many! If I’m tempted to get stuck on the sad parts
today it is because of the date – and walking this journey to the cross – and
having it align in equivalent time so completely to Jesus’ story in 33 AD.
Later, after Easter, I’ll share the next chapter in the journey.... I’ve had
enough traveling down memory lane for today.
