A letter from God, first week after Easter

Why my child, do you live as if I did not understand your life?


That you are scrambling, anxious, frantic, sleepless?


Did the sun not rise this morning?

And when you least expected it, a reprieve or a kindness came?

Or did you fail to notice how the birds sing on despite the heat and their infringements of their habitats?

As the world careens towards its implosion, the prime of my creation will suffer the most, while the rest of creation will do the best they can - hunting, mating with flair and flourish, resting and repeating it all over.

Men and women will do far worse. Some of the specimen will no doubt plod on, even doing their utmost to avert catastrophe and inject goodness into the decay. But most will be out for themselves, heaping hurt and scars on souls and all forms of terrain, physical, psychosocial and eternal.

My child, I am not at all blind to how the world is. My son, Jesus the Christ, came to live like one of you. He had a human body that was tired, hungry, stirred and tempted. He had the full range of emotions and he had plenty of expectations from all ranks and file. He lived a real life.

He also died a real death, and an excruciatingly painful one, the details of which I don’t want to repeat.

Why, is the real question.

He lived a real life because life is holy, special and precious. Your life is.

You can see in his life, how it was easy for him to be someone else, to submit to the powerful systems of the day, to play along or to turn into a coward. Those are actual options, for him, as for you.

Some of you feel you have no choice. No, you do. You always do.


You can see in his death - even in all the injustice – how you can die angry, reluctant, frightened, or at peace.

So my son came to show you life, and how to live it.

and he died so you can see how to die, in a world that may demand your life and cause your death.


He came to show you that Life is more than living, that even death cannot take Life away.

So I want you my child to wake up each day, and breathe large lungfuls of Life into your being.

Look at that never-ending do-list, the unresolved conflict, the eye bags and even the lightly lined purse - and say, even so, I shall LIVE.

Then you shall no longer just know that I number your hairs and supplies your needs. You shall experience it!


I have saints whose lives showcase Life -

their diets will appall many of you in the first world.

their solitary lives will shock many of you in the connected world.

their fruitfulness will overturn your ideas of productivity and fulfilment.

Yes, you are quick to protest that you are not one of these saints.

Well, I mean you to be.

Because I am Life and that’s what I want for you.

Most of you won’t need to leave where you live or stop what you do.

Some of you won’t require major changes to your lives.

But many of you must consider if you are truly, really, living - the Life - Jesus modeled, and died so you may have…. a life of freedom -

from lust and shame

from abusing others and being abused

from fear 

 In considering, you will come to see that your ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

Parents may have to give up their careers to be home with the ripening lives entrusted to them.

Professionals may have to reconfigure their work vision to notice that in the end, their work is about life: staff meetings, colleagues, products, datelines… are about actual, real lives. You may have to change your agendas, tone your expectations, extend your timelines.

Pastors may have to learn to speak up for those whose lives and work conditions reduce their humanity.

I know the future is so uncertain and feels bleak. But I am GOD and I hold the world in my hands. I especially hold my saints.

Again, if you hang on to your life (small ‘l’), my Son told you that you would lose it.

So stop building the life (small ‘l’) you want.

Start praying for a desire for Life, and if you have asked Jesus to be your Saviour and LORD, it is there already, like a seed ripening….

Protect and nourish that seed, and see Life springing up - in spite of the second law of thermodynamics and all of everything going downhill. It’s a paradox, a surprise and a mystery. Life.

Meeting the Cross on the way {journey to the Well} #11

Good Friday is coming.

The Cross is looming large in my heart. Its shadows fall long and it seems I am in a perpetual Arctic winter where the days are always dark. Yet it is a good, even glorious darkness. This kind of darkness is meant for us to stop trying to 'make hay while the sun shines'; to stop our busy efforts at making life work. It is the dark of being shielded so a secret work can take place.

Often God does his work very quietly and if we do not come under the shadow of the Almighty, we will miss it. The lights, sounds, dazzles and demands of daily city life often distract and detract us from God's most precious work.

Can I urge you dear friend to come and stand under the shadow of the Cross too?

And would you share with us what begins to stir in your heart as you do?

As I stand under the shadow of the Cross, my mind remembers how Love decided to act. But more, my heart wrestles with whether my love is large enough to act like His Love did. I know full well the areas I want Life to fill and brim over; those areas I am pretty sick of being so pale and lacklustre; missing the Life and abundance.

What was it dear Jesus, that makes you go to that wicked Cross? Why did you face and fight death?

Then the Spirit whispers this ~

"...for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame.." ~ Hebrews 12v2

You know why we struggle so to let go, to give in, to give up, to be wrong, to forgive ... ? 

We have no clue the joy that can come. We are stuck with the nails and hammer. Our eyes are fixed on the pain. Our minds are rehearsing our regrets. Our hearts are clinging on to small delights. 

Jesus was confident of his joy. 

This enabled him to endure the cross. 

This enabled him to look at his ignoble, humiliating, undignified death and loss as something to despise. 

Jesus knew the enemy would do his worst; throw the whole shebang; but he wasn't going to let the horror, the agony, the loss of face.. - the shame - wrap him up into subservience.  He despised it all. They were not worth his focus.

If Jesus felt grief and loss on the Cross; it was clear it happened at three points: the ignorance of the evildoers, the turning away of God, the inability to continue to care for his mother. 

But the Cross and its shame? He despised it.

It was as if Jesus was having this conversation with shame:

"Listen to me, Shame, do you fee that joy in front of me? Compared to that, you are less than nothing. you not not worth comparing to that! I despise you. You think you have power. Compared to the joy before me, you have none. Joy. Joy. Joy. That is my power! Not you, Shame. You are worthless. You are powerless.

You think you can distract me? I won't even look at you. I have a joy set before me. Why would I look at you? You are ugly and despicable, and you are almost finished. You cover me now as with a shroud. Before you can say, 'So there!', I will throw you off like a filthy rag. I will put on my royal robe.

You think you are great, because even last night you made my disciples run away. You are a fool, Shame. You are a despicable fool. That abandonment, that loneliness, this Cross - these tools of yours - they are all my sacred suffering, and will save my disciples, not destroy them. You are are fool. Your filthy hands fulfil holy prophecy. Farewell, Shame, It is finished."

{with thanks to Ps John Piper}.

Death must -come- before Resurrection, and we take the death because we so want the Resurrection unto new Life. Because we are confident of New Life promised to us. Things are not what they seem yet; but they will not remain the same if we are willing to die, to despise the shame that may come with it ... so that Life breaks in.

How high have you set your sights for your life? Is it for Life, or is it just to live?

~ Bare: a friend shares raw and honest.

Through Roseys Glasses: Five Minute Friday ~ Bare