A Freaking Radical

Sitting in Barnes & Noble with my daughter, in something of a holding pattern.

I read this post, and sorrow or something like it enveloped my chest, crawled up through my throat and leaked out of my eyes.

I don't know why it struck me so powerfully. Perhaps because I am in a season of walking through a land that is littered with dry bones and carcasses. Maybe because I have a deeper sense of the fragile hold we have on the simplest of things, like just making sense of life. Maybe because I've had the painful privilege of holding hands with some friends and family members through a broken, desperate time.

Maybe because walking through my current book study on the crazy, relentless, all-powerful love of God, my eyes are being opened to glory of a magnitude that I have never considered.

Whatever the factors, I know this: the faith I have in God continues to deepen. I do not have to imagine or invent it. Something literally has taken hold in the deepest part of me and is rooted, immovable. It is intrinsic to my life.

It is a mystery to me.

I speak occasionally of the fact that the God we celebrate on Sundays is mysterious and supernatural. There is some definitive power in Jesus that is beyond our understanding and, to some degree, beyond rational thought or reason.

Milton Brasher-Cunningham wrote about the transition from Epiphany to Lent, about "our picture of Jesus moving from the One Who Came to the One Who is Going to the Cross." And it just shredded me.

Not long ago we celebrated the birth of the baby, the iconic, helpless infant who was somehow part of Creation and key to Redemption. And in the liturgy of the structure of Christian faith, we are quickly swept along through the season, from Christmas to Easter, to the horrific, tortured death of that same baby.

Brasher-Cunningham writes:

"...moving into Lent moves us from rejoicing in the compassion of God in human form to the somber reality of Jesus’ example of what it means to be human calling us to our own more authentic and dangerous existence. Long after Magi and mangers, we are left with a Messiah who is a freaking radical."

I think this resonates with me today at the core of my maternal heart, which - after five kids and a lifetime impacted by my role as a parent, is the deepest, most definable part of me.

The concept of a baby growing through childhood into her "more authentic and dangerous existence" hits my tender spot today.

Brasher-Cunningham ends his post with welcome anticipation of what kind of "glorious damage an untamed God can do." It is not without pain, tears, and gut-wrenching sobs. But, in God's hands, it is glorious indeed, and the violence to our bodies done by the wild mercy of a freaking radical is bearable.

Because in the end, love wins.

By the way, Milton blogs at Don't Eat Alone. Every year, he writes a disciplined series of posts through Lent. It has been a consistent part of my faith journey for a few years now. I encourage you to read him, daily, from today through Easter. Find him at donteatalone.blogspot.com. You can start today.