As promised, here’s the link to the guest post I wrote for Strangely Dim, the blog for Likewise (that’s the imprint my book is published under). All month they’re celebrating the Women of Likewise in honor of Women’s History Month. I doubt I’ll be making history any time soon (or ever), but you can read my post anyway.

Wishing you a blessed Lent,
Kimberlee

This year, instead of fasting from some kind of food (though my kids once again decided we should abstain from Girl Scout cookies during Lent), I’m going to do something really radical. I’m going to fast from blogging.

I know. Every speaker at every marketing seminar I’ve been to in the past year (and I’ve been to a lot – every other professional writers’ meeting I go to seems to be focused on marketing) would tell me I’m committing virtual suicide. So be it. If my blog writing has to die so my other writing can live, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

This is also an act of trust. I am trusting that whoever is out there reading my blog – and whoever you are, I thank you; I’m honored that you choose to spend time with me! – I am trusting you will come back in six weeks (Easter is April 4). I am trusting that my long absence will not mean starting over from zero readers come April. I am trusting that my other writing projects are worth the risk I’m taking.

I will not be a complete stranger these next weeks. I have three guest appearances scheduled on other blogs during Lent, and I’ll link to those as they go live. I may also post an author interview that’s in the works.

But mostly I’m going to ignore the siren call of the internet and focus on several other writing projects that have been whispering in my mind for some time, projects that I’ve locked in the basement because I don’t feel well, don’t have enough energy, don’t have enough time to listen to them. They’re getting loud down there, beating on the door for me to let them out. And so I don’t go totally crazy, I’m going to let them out and spend the next weeks listening to them, writing them down.

And I hope to come back excited and energized, ready for another year of blogging. (Yes, it’s really been a whole year this week since I started blogging.)

So. I’ll see you in Easter!

John 19:40-42

And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
“God’s Grandeur”

On this day of deepest darkness, when the last lights off the black west have shuttered out (for two days now), on this day when our Lord lay in the earth, even on this day, God is present: the Holy Spirit broods like a mother hen over our fallen world, wings shining softly in the inky blackness that precedes Eternal Day.


The lectionary passages for Holy Saturday:
Job 14:1-14 or Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24
Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16
I Peter 4:1-8
Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk 23:34)

“Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Lk 23:43)

“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (Lk 23:46)

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34)

“Woman, behold thy son! … Behold thy mother!” (Jn 19:26-27)

“I thirst.” (Jn 19:28)

“It is finished.” (Jn 19:30)

I’ve been pondering all week which of these words I will pray today as a breath prayer, repeated over and over as I go about the activities of my day. After a particularly draining day yesterday, I realized I need to commend my spirit, my soul, my life to God–again–to lay it all at Jesus’ feet.

I am 33 this year, and am feeling more poignantly than I have before the horror and sorrow of this day. I will not compare myself to Jesus; His suffering is beyond anything I can imagine. I will only compare myself to the women at the foot of the cross, helpless, grieving, guilty, grateful: O my God, You have borne so much, all this, everything…


The lectionary passages for Good Friday are:
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42

While the people around me sang, I tried not to cry. My life is really good right now, as good as it’s ever been, so why I was crying I don’t know. But the ache in my chest was real, an ache of longing and sadness that could only be expressed in tears.

Since I couldn’t sing, I watched the choir. I saw a woman whose beloved dog was killed by a motorist last fall. I saw a man whose wife of two years is extremely ill with cancer. I saw his wife, her hands raised in praise. And I saw a man who was in a near fatal bike crash two years ago, restored to life.

I saw two dozen other people who have heartbreak, sorrow, and difficulty of one stripe or another singing their hosannas to God. And all around me, too, still more broken people were singing, their hands raised, their voices lifted up in praise.

And I wept. I wept for the beauty of it, for the sacrifice of praise on the lips of people whose lives are hard. I wept for the hope they hold on to: that though they wade into that river, Christ has been through it first and goes through it with them; that they experience nothing—nothing—apart from His love and His presence.

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day Jesus waded into the river. And he is there yet, holding us up, helping us through, giving His life for ours.


The lectionary passages for Maundy Thursday:
Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
I Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

But it’s not.

Because it doesn’t end there. Jesus doesn’t ride up to the Temple and institute a new world order. He doesn’t usher in the Kingdom of God once and for all. He doesn’t, in fact, do anything. By the time he gets to the Temple, his adoring fans have vanished. He looks around. He leaves. That’s it. (If you don’t believe me, read Mark 11:1-11.)

He comes back the next day and turns over the money-changing tables, bars the Temple doors so no one can get through, and accuses the priests and the people of defiling God’s holy place, of being mercenaries and robbers.

And He doesn’t stop. He tells story after story about how bad the supposedly religious are, how great the poor and needy are, how the rejected are chosen, and the chosen rejected.

The priests are furious. Even Judas, one of the Twelve, is deeply disappointed enough that he’s willing to betray his teacher. The priests are gleeful and promise to give him money.

Jesus knows all this, and still He keeps at it, preaching His upside down kingdom. By Friday of that week, He’s managed to piss off the people of Jerusalem so badly that the same people who adulated Him on Sunday are now clamoring for His death, preferring to release a murderous thug onto the streets of the city rather than let this itinerant rabbi loose to call them out of their sorry lives and into a better one.

And that’s when the liturgy gets uncomfortable, that’s when I start to hate Palm Sunday, because we’ve reached the place where the worship leader says, “Pilate spoke to them: Whom do you want me to release for you, the criminal Barabbas or Jesus, called Christ?”

And we in the congregation cry out, Barabbas!

Then what should I do with Jesus?

Crucify Him!

Why? What evil has He done?

Let Him be crucified!

Let Him be crucified, we cry, loudly, all our voices joined together, demanding this one thing: the crucifixion of the One we claim to follow.

It’s our demand, our cry, our voices. It’s yours. It’s mine. And I hate having to acknowledge that this was not just those idiot people back then; it’s this idiot person right now, the one who looks back from the mirror and generally feels pleased with herself that she’s not like that. You know. Because I bet you do it, too.

But we are like that. We are the people who make this demand—every day, every hour—because of the way we live our lives, or fail to.

And our voices prevail.


Read it yourself.
The Lectionary passages for Palm/Passion Sunday are:
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 (Palm) or 31:9-16 (Passion)
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark 11:1-11 (Palm) or 14:1-15:47 (Passion)

The alternate Psalm for this Fifth Sunday of Lent is from Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible (176 verses), the whole of which is a paean of praise to God’s law. I read this psalm last week as part of my church’s challenge to read through the Psalms during Lent, and I was struck by the psalmist’s passionate love—I can’t call it anything else—for the Law of God.

I don’t think much about the law of God, to be honest. I’m too busy thinking about myself—or maybe my kids. So I found it shocking that the psalmist wrote 176 verses—352 lines—about how much he (or she) loves God’s law. In today’s excerpt alone, there are eight active verbs that describe the psalmist’s relationship (this is love, remember?) with the law:
seek
treasure
declare
delight
meditate
fix
delight (again!)
remember

And the psalmist engages his whole person in this love relationship with God’s law—legs, heart, lips, eyes, mind, memory.

Reading these verses again, I am stunned by the intensity of them, the intensity of the psalmist’s desire to be close to God, to walk in God’s ways, to live in God’s law. The man has passion and singleness of purpose. He has a pure heart (vs 9) because he wills one thing: to follow the law of the Lord.

Jesus willed one thing, too: to do the will of the Father, no matter the cost. And it cost Him dearly. As we descend deeper into the darkness of Lent and come nearer and nearer to our Lord’s death, I wonder, what’s my one thing? What’s yours?


Read it yourself.
The lectionary readings for the fifth Sunday of Lent:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

So I wondered about that word, mercy. My dictionary says it comes from the Old French merci, which means “pity” or “thanks” (apparently, the French still use it, merci beaucoup). That Old French word comes from the Latin merces or merced, which means “reward.”

Now that’s interesting. A reward is usually something you get for doing something you’re supposed to do. My son’s reward for napping on Christmas Eve is that he gets to stay up and go to the midnight service. My reward for writing this blog post is that I’m going to treat myself to a cookie. But mercy is what we get when we do something we’re not supposed to do and then don’t have to suffer the consequence.

So this linking of mercy and reward intrigues me. A God who is rich in mercy is a God who rewards us—but not as we deserve. God lets Jack go to the midnight service even if he doesn’t nap. God lets me eat the cookie, regardless of whether I’ve blogged.

As I look back at just this last week, I see evidence of God’s mercy all over the place—a car accident that wasn’t, a step off a curb that could have ended in a broken ankle but didn’t, an unexpected evening of rest in an otherwise overscheduled week.

My daughter’s favorite hymn right now is “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” and she sings it with me when I tuck her in, only instead of “Morning by morning new mercies I see,” she sings, “new mercies I seize.” I love this. It reminds me that while God is rich in mercy, I’ll never know it unless I seize the mercies He extends to me, the rewards I don’t deserve.

Read it for yourself
The lectionary passages for the fourth Sunday of Lent are:
Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

The lectionary readings for the third Sunday of Lent:
Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
I Cor. 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

First, the Ten Commandments. Always a good reminder of God’s baseline for behavior. I have been particularly convicted of late about number 3: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God.” The ease with which I recently dropped the words “Oh my God” shocked even me. I said it in a roomful of people who aren’t Christians, and I was using God’s name to try to tell these folks, Look, I’m no different from you. But I am different. I happen to love God—a lot—and my vain use of God’s name makes me look like a hypocrite. No, it actually makes me a hypocrite. Ouch.

Next, Psalm 19, one of my favorite pieces of poetry, biblical or otherwise. You just have to read it for yourself. Go on. Get your Bible. Read.

Then 1 Corinthians 1. I have to confess, half the time I don’t have a clue what Paul is talking about. Today’s reading is no exception—until you get to the end and read this gem: “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” The lectionary ends there, but if you keep reading, you get to that great passage about God choosing the weak and the foolish and the low and the despised to accomplish the divine purpose, which I find particularly reassuring in light of a certain paragraph above.

And finally, Jesus making a whip of cords and driving out the money changers. I finished reading this passage, and all I could say was, “I love Jesus!” I do. I love Jesus. In the intellectual Christian circles I roam the edges of, saying such a thing out loud (or online) is a little gauche, awkward, embarrassing. But I can’t help it. Jesus rocks. Here is a man who knows who he is and why he’s here, and I can’t help but love that he lives into and out of his identity so fully and without apology. I want to be like that.

So, go on, if you haven’t yet, read these passages. Maybe read them every day this week. Then let them percolate in your heart, your mind, your soul as you go about doing whatever it is you do.

What I love most about this story is that it gives the disciples—and us—a glimpse of what is really, truly real. When Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on Mount Tabor to pray, the appearance of his face changes and his clothes become dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear with him in glory. This is how and who he truly is–the second Person of the Trinity, who transcends time and space, who exists from the beginning in glory.

In Luke’s version of the story, the disciples are half-asleep as Jesus prays through the night. I love this little detail, too, because isn’t that how it feels sometimes as you go through your day—or your life? Like you’re only partly present and the rest of you is somewhere else? Asleep, maybe, or daydreaming or figuring out how you’re going to fit it all in (whatever “it” is).

Only when the disciples fully awaken do they see Jesus in his glory, a glory that is his from before time, but which has been veiled from their sight until this moment when they finally see him as he truly is. Jesus hasn’t changed, not really, but the disciples’ vision of him has. For the first time, they see truly.

Lent invites us to strip away the things that keep us half-asleep as we live our lives, particularly (for us hyper Americans) the busyness, crammed schedules, and rushing that often blind us to what’s right in front of us. Instead, Lent invites us to slow down, look around, pay attention, see. Who knows? When we do, maybe we’ll receive a glimpse of God’s glory, too.

So: how are you going to make space to see?

Read it yourself:
The lectionary readings for the second Sunday of Lent:
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 9:2-10