The Power of the Resurrection.

"He went walking and leaping and praising God
 Walking and leaping and praising God..."

These words were running through my head as we stood in a small room hidden in the bowels of the hospital.  We were lead there through many twistings and turnings after those other words.  Life crashing, mind numbing, heart twisting, gut turning words: dead on arrival.  Later I would second guess myself and wonder.  And shoulda, woulda, coulda.  Wonder if I should have commanded him "In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!".  Would he have gotten up and walked?  Could I have done that?  I wonder.

Sometime later I had a dream.  He was there on large plywood box in the yard, cold and still.  My sisters and I were gathered all around.  Someone cried "Get up!"  And he did. He came leaping down from there with a big missing teeth smile on his face.  We were laughing and crying, and all talking at once.  He was holding my hand.  Then he looked up at me.  His face was sad and his eyes  filled with tears.
"But I don't want to stay. I want to go back"
"It's OK" I said "You can go."
I woke up and he was gone.  I wanted so much to keep him but I had to let him go.

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

Waiting for the trumpet - Pat

2013 Ash Wednesday

"Come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
the sheep of His hand.    Psalm 95:6-7

                    Sheep in Kenya by Julie Ann

"Our lives can become a wilderness when experiences expose our frail and tenuous existence.  Episodes of bewilderment, abandonment, and inner terror reveal our soul restless cravings and fundamental neediness.
In the wilderness we can lose our bearings.
Or regain them."  (Dr. Timothy S. Laniak)

"Amen is our cry of belonging to Christ, the one whose promises can be fully trusted, who is shelter and guiding star in the desert we sometimes make of our lives." (St. Mary's Press)

Amen! quite literally: "I will drive my tent peg into that."

Lashing one's tent so that when the sudden desert winds come up the shelter stands secure. Like the firm placement of a piton for a rock climber, the driving of a tent peg for a desert traveler can mean life or death.
                       
                           "On Christ the Solid Rock I stand,
                           all other ground is sinking sand."