Resurrection: Graveyards and Gardens

This seems like a somewhat appropriate time to write about this topic.  Two words have been coming to mind a lot lately - resurrection and redemption.  I think (hope) this is going to be a theme for a while, so hopefully I'll be exploring these concepts in more depth.

I haven't been too shy about the fact that I've felt frustrated and stagnated.  I'm caught between learning to relax into Father's unfolding revelation of what he's doing in my life and a strong desire to make some sort of change just so I feel that I'm moving forward.

It seems the longer I wait, the more I'm being forced to let go of all my expectations.  C'mon, we all have that little time-line in our heads, don't we?

"I'll be married when I'm X years old."

"I'll have a house by the time I'm Y."

"I'll find a good job I enjoy within Z years."

Tick-tock goes the clock, the days pass by and nothing ever changes.  Pardon my melodramatic expression, but I feel like I'm sitting in a tomb littered with the skeletons of old hopes and dreams.  I feel stuck in never-ending winter, the landscape of my life gray and barren.

At a certain point I just started wondering if maybe I had missed the boat with this.  Maybe I've been wrong all along about what God's been doing in my life.  Maybe he's not preparing something for me, or me for something; maybe he's just sitting there and the only person who can change my life is me.  Maybe it's all up to me, it all rests on my ability to make something happen.

Or maybe all those things I hoped for, things I thought God planted deep within my heart . . . maybe those things are dead.  Maybe they'll never happen.  Maybe all I really have to look forward to in life is tedious repetition, long days in small cubicles, one soul-smothering day after another.

But sometimes . . . I remember I'm not alone.  I remember that just because something is dead, it doesn't mean it will stay that way.

After Lazarus died, Jesus traveled to the town in which he had lived.  He was met by Martha, and he comforted her by telling her that Lazarus would rise again.

“I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day," she replied.

But then Jesus corrected her understanding of the resurrection.  He told her that it wasn't an event, it was a Person.  

"I am the resurrection."

So yeah, maybe sometimes I feel like hope has died.  I get all mopey and emo-y and do silly things like compare my life to a tomb.  But a tomb with Jesus in it is really no tomb at all.  For Jesus, a tomb isn't where dead things are buried and forgotten, it's a place where dead things come to life.

And so I remember that I know Someone who is the Resurrection.  I know Someone who turns graveyards into gardens.  I know the One who turns winter to spring, despair to hope, a funeral dirge to joyous laughter. 

And yeah, things aren't moving according to my time-line.  Learning to trust Father and walk with him instead of trying to force something on my own is quite difficult.  I do often struggle with doubts and fears as to why things aren't unfolding how I thought they would.

But I get to walk through all that with Someone who is the Resurrection and the Life.  I get to respond to his invitation to join him in what he is doing in me and around me, to learn his timing and rhythm, and to find the security of his love and grace that make all things new. 

Today is April 2nd and it is snowing.  But Spring is coming.