Let Everything that Has Breath Praise the Lord

Yesterday afternoon my kids found one of those little fuzzy caterpillars that you always see in springtime.  They carefully placed it into a jar filled with leaves "just in case he gets hungry" and poked holes in the top for air.  I felt bad for the poor little guy and sure that we would awake in the morning or next few days and find it dead.  To my surprise, instead of a dead caterpillar we found a cocoon!

Hmmm. I didn't really know what to say.  This was not what I expected, but it was a very pleasant surprise! So I prayed, "Lord what are you trying to show me?"  Over the next few hours the Lord tenderly brought to my remembrance the wonderful story of Easter--as He has been doing that a lot lately.  I thought about the disciples and Thomas especially, who did not expect to find the risen Christ but instead expected to find a dead man. We like to think that we would not have wavered in our faith after seeing Jesus walk on water, raise the dead, and heal the blind, crippled, and lame but the truth is we are all just as imperfect as the disciples. What a pleasant surprise when they discovered the Messiah who had overcome the grave!!! 

It would be enough just to worship a Messiah who could overcome death, but our God is not a God who just covers the basics. He goes above and beyond and extends that same power to us! Just a simple faith in The One who did what we could never do on our own, and we too overcome the grave and have eternal life.  Just a simple faith in the power of love, so powerful that the gates of hell could not keep him, and we too share in the joys of heaven.  Just a simple faith in Jesus, the son of God, who appeared to over 5000 after his death and burial, and we are invited into the family of God, creator of the Universe!

Oh but this wonderful God we serve took it even a step further. He invites us, through faith in Jesus, to share in Jesus' death and resurrection. We are invited to surrender our sinful lives to the one who was sinless. Therefore we are spiritually crucified and brought back into new life.

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." 

Galatians 2:20

AND because we are crucified with Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:17 promises us,

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:  The old has gone, the new is here!" 

Wow. What an amazing God who loves us so very much that He went above and beyond. We have not been refurbished. We are new creations.

Thank you Lord for the sweet reminder of what you did for me. Thank you Lord for reminding me that I am a new creation and that many people who knew me from my pre-Christ life may not recognise me because they remember a caterpillar but will be pleasantly surprised when they see I am now a butterfly.  Thank you Lord for not just saving me, but bringing me into a full and abundant life. I am so very grateful.  This little caterpillar's life gives you glory and praise and so shall mine!

Psalm 148:7,9-10,13

"Praise the LORD from the earth,
you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,

you mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars,

wild animals and all cattle,
small creatures and flying birds,

Let them praise the name of the LORD,
for his name alone is exalted;
his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.

Go To The Tomb, But Don't Stay In It

This morning Hubby and I were discussing the difference in problem solving skills in men and women. Of course he was giving me the 411 on how men deal with things and I was doing my best to represent women all over the world.  Before I tell you what God taught me in all of that I will give a brief history of the differences between Hubby and myself.

Hubby is the eternal optimist. Nothing is so bad that it can't be fixed. He has little time to sweat the small stuff so he doesn't.  The glass is always half full, and there is no point in dwelling on the past. He is a dreamer and believes there is no limit to what God can do. Even if he fell miserably on his face after a faith jump, he would dust himself off, praise God and jump again. I am in awe of him--I really am.

I like to call myself a realist although I think that is just a nice way of saying I am a pessimist.  Small stuff builds on top of each other and eventually make big stuff. My glass is always half empty, and my past, although forgiven by my precious Savior, makes me want to kick my own butt. If I fell miserably on my face after a faith jump, I would lay in the dirt and cry and then get mad and pout with God.

We are so opposite, but yet we compliment each other so beautifully.

Anyway, so we were discussing how men vs. women resolve problems.  I appreciate the differences between the sexes, whereas Hubby is a little annoyed with them.  He works with an office full of women who sweat the small stuff and see the glass not half empty but empty.  He looks at it like women like to blow things up and make something huge out of them in order to validate their feelings. He might be right in some situations.  We discussed how women's brains are like a ball of yarn-one thought attached to the next thought, attached to the next thought. Men's are like waffles-compartmentalized where one thought in one square has nothing to do with the thought in the other square. Then we put away our psychology/sociology and picked up our Bibles.

One story that stuck out to me in reference to men vs. women was after Jesus had been crucified.  After the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathia and the two Marys were the ones who buried Jesus. They were the ones who placed his body into the tomb. The women could not embalm his body because it was the Sabbath, but when the Sabbath was over, these women were the only ones who came to embalm Jesus. Where were all the other disciples? Why weren't they there to help put their beloved Rabbi in the tomb? Perhaps it was the Jewish custom that women were to only do this; I don't know for sure. 

No doubt that Jesus' death was a huge problem for his followers. I think it is a natural part of who we are as women that when we have a problem, we sit with it. It's big to us, and it won't go away until we deal with it in our own way.  Many men are different. They don't want to focus on the problem in a real, up close way. They have to look at it from a distance as if looking out on the horizon to focus on the enemy's army on it's way.  The disciples kept their distance from their problem. They dealt with the burial and death of Jesus in their own way, away from the actual problem. The women went into the tomb with their problem. We are just different; no one is better and no one is worse.

The problem for us as women, is when we can't leave the tomb...when we can't leave our problem.  I am not sure what God would have done if the women stayed with the body of Jesus. It was obviously his Divine will that they not.
 

My thoughts are, if we never leave the problem, hurt, disappointment, then we miss the resurrection. If the women wouldn't have left and came back, they would have missed the power, miracle, beauty and amazement of the empty tomb.  Sometimes as women we have to know when to bury the problem so that we can see God do a miracle. 

Lord, help me to know when I need to leave the tomb of a problem, hurt, or disappointment so that you can do a miracle. Let me know when to leave the tomb so that you can restore life to that which was once dead.  Ladies, lets not stay in the tomb too long. God has some work that he needs to do.