No, I’m not starting a Moby Dick epic.

I just woke up this morning with the name Diotrephes in my head, and I realized that I’m way too much like him.

Remember him? He’s the one that epistle-writing John talks about:

I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us. – 3 John 1:9

That’s me. I love to be first.

It’s not that I will have nothing to do with the church; quite the opposite. But I do love to be first. I like being recognized for nice things I do, especially at church. I like being complimented and encouraged. I like attention.

(My late uncle Gene Ellmore was known, on at least one occasion, to help someone in charge who was having difficulty quieting a rowdy meeting room by standing up and proclaiming loudly: “Attention! Attention!” When Uncle Gene’s big, booming voice died away, you could hear a pin drop and all eyes were on him. He’d grin, shrug, and say: “I just love attention,” and he’d sit down.)

Being first, being right, and getting all the attention flies in the face of that time-honored “J.O.Y.” principle they used to teach us in Sunday School.

I need a better name. Maybe “Ellmore,” for my uncle … or something like it. Maybe “Elwood.” Like Elwood P. Dowd, who loved his family enough to be willing to give up his dear friend Harvey, the 6-foot white pooka. Or Elwood Blues, who with his brother Jake risked any threat to himself – because they were on a mission from God. Yeah. “Elwood.”

Call me Elwood.

I was somehow both saddened and relieved to receive an e-mail flash a few minutes ago bearing the news that Terri Schiavo has died. But I think this development is far from making the issue moot. I just hope it doesn’t serve to further polarize our country politically on issues which very nearly transcend human wisdom.

Perhaps it’s more important right now to pray for the family and the people who are most grieved … and to remember, too, all of the other less-publicized tragedies that play out every day, breaking hearts and offering the opportunity for those broken to seek the face of God – whether in grief, anger, thanksgiving, supplication, acquiesence, or some potent combination of them.

I have a daughter who is eight years old and almost nine.

She loves to sing – especially along with Zoe Group music in our car – and loves to say grace at the table.

She says the sweetest prayers at bedtime, even though she no longer asks God’s blessing for each child in her grade at school by name.

She feels that she is too big for piggyback prayers at bedtime now, since her 12-year-old, 104-pound brother is.

I miss those piggyback prayers. They were such a great reminder to me that I carry my children in prayer to the Father, and I bear responsibility for their spiritual formation.

My daughter is getting away from the stock prayer-phrases that she hears in chapel at her school, which is hosted in our church building. She’s starting to really pray now, asking specifically about friends of hers that are sick or having some kind of problem – no matter how small – and she has that unshakeable childlike faith that God will hear her and take care of it.

In fact, her brother’s bedtime prayers are still pretty dependent on those phrases that he and the other boys use in chapel prayers. I have faith he’ll come around and put his own thoughts into his own words. Still ….

My daughter won’t be leading prayers in chapel.

I understand the whys and wherefores and precedents and policies and frets and fears. I’ve been warned all my life about all kinds of slippery slopes, and I have even seen some prove to be treacherous.

But unless something happens soon; unless someone dares to find out whether the slope is slippery – or if it even is a slope or just a magical-house-on-the-hill optical illusion ….

My sweet daughter may not have the experience of being a channel of God’s blessing to others through her prayer – except at home. Like her mother, whose heart is as wide and deep as eternity itself, she may never feel the touch of a grateful hand on her shoulder or hear the encouragement of a brother or sister who was strengthened by her prayer … or the song she led … or the thoughts she shared at the Lord’s table … or her heartfelt interpretation of a scripture she read … or her story about Jesus, as only a girl or a woman can picture Him.

She’ll read in her Bible about a woman in Sychar of Samaria who shared the first gospel message in scripture; about a sick woman who confessed her faith by touching Jesus’ garment; about Joanna and Susanna, who were the first to support His ministry; about Mary of Magdala, who was first to tell the apostles about the risen Lord; about Lydia who was among the first to host a church in the home; about Euodia and Syntyche and Priscilla and Claudia and how many others.

But her name may never be added to a list that anyone else reads; an order of worship or a roster of leaders.

The prospect of it makes me profoundly sad.

I’m convinced that the way things are now can’t be the way things were then.

And that the slant of the way things are built now is the only thing that makes the slope we’re on look normal and flat and safe.

Pretty much everything.

But that hasn’t stopped me from writing about it. Looking back at my archives, it looks like I’ve become obsessed with it.

Have I?

HeartWorship: Resurrection
HeartWorship: Beautiful Feet
Resurrection and Reality
The Face of Forgiveness
Upon Three Nails

And if I have, is that a bad thing?

Don’t get me wrong; I love my life. I’m not pining away for the life-to-come and neglecting this one. Because I also understand that it’s dangerous to love this life too much:

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” – John 12:24-25

Palm Sunday is long gone. Maundy Thursday is over. It’s not Good Friday. It’s not Easter Sunday.

It’s just Nothing Day.

To His followers on this day 1,975 years ago, Jesus was dead and buried in a signet-sealed tomb; His washed and wrapped body surrounded by a hundred pounds of fragrant spices. It was over.

Nothing has made Nothing Day more real to me than a scene from a play called Resurrection by then-student Jonathan Cloud, performed at Harding University many years ago. Since there was a dearth of male actors available, a few friends of the college were recruited from the community, and I was cast as Matthew.

In that scene, the disciples have slunk back to their rented upper room from their fearful scattering, and now mourn His torturous death the day before in relative silence, punctuated by ponderings about things He has said about returning.

Matthew puts his voice to what they’re all thinking, though: “He said He’d come back … but He never did. Now …”

When I spoke the words in dress rehearsal, I burst into tears, suddenly feeling all of the pain and despair and frustration that the disciples must have felt. My friend Keith Sliter, portraying a burly apostle Andrew with the next line, nearly came apart – but waited until the scene was over to pull me aside: “Are you all right? You’ve got to warn me when you’re going to do something like that.”

“I couldn’t,” I said. He put a hand on my shoulder. “I understand.”

The same thing happened at every performance. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t method acting. It was just something that went too deep for words.

Nothing Day.

Milton Stanley posts that Rusty Peterman, minister and fellow blogger, suffered a stroke recently. Please pray for his speedy and complete recovery!

You’ve read the books. You’ve seen the movies.

So have I. But can any of us really force ourselves to experience what it must have been like on that first Good Friday?

The millions of words written to describe it can’t begin to. More gruesome than any horror story; more heart-breaking than any romance; more soul-wrenching than any account of innocents suffering and dying.

Because it’s not just one Man. It’s all of us. He dies there for all of us.

And we’re not innocent; not by a long shot.

One word from His lips could have stopped it and obliterated us all forever.

But that word was not, is not, cannot be in His nature.

That’s a very good thing, because He could still say it.

That makes today a very Good Friday.

I’ve never “given up” anything for Lent before. It wasn’t part of my religious tradition in the churches of Christ I’ve attended. Over the years, I’ve heard – and even made – jokes about giving up watermelons for Lent (I don’t like them and they’re not in season); the tragedy of folks who gave up chocolate just before Girl Scout cookie delivery time and such.

I don’t know why. I’ve fasted with prayer several times before, especially when Angi and I were trying to adopt and were blessed with our two beautiful children.

But this year I felt challenged by some fellow bloggers and article-writers who have made a Lenten fast part of their heritage, Catholic or otherwise, and have been blessed by it.

This year I stopped drinking soft drinks at the beginning of the Lenten season. That’s forty days and six Sundays without the bubbly stuff. It may seem silly or pointless or even easy for some, but it started out to be really difficult for me.

I love Mountain Dew. I work on a campus that has an arrangement with Pepsi-Cola, and there are Mountain Dew vending machines everywhere.

I promised myself early on (myself; not God – I wasn’t sure I could go through with it!) that I’d drink only coffee, tea, water, milk or juice until Easter. Each time I felt that insatiable craving for Mountain Dew, I would pause to be thankful – if for nothing else, for the luxury of living surrounded by a veritable sea of soft drinks!

As the fast progressed, I found plenty of other things to be thankful for. And I found the craving was diminishing. After a while, I occasionally even forgot to take that moment out for thanksgiving. Oops!

I knew it wouldn’t be a proper fast, though, if I didn’t celebrate it in the spirit of Isaiah 58:1-7. So I also resolved to save the coins I would have plugged into those vending machines, and instead plug them into a fundraising can for Riley’s Warriors. It may not be quite the same as God’s admonition through Isaiah to share food with the hungry, but it does benefit families with special-needs children, giving them a free, much-needed “day off” from that intensive care through qualified specialists and caregivers. Many parents of such children spend all they have – money, time, energy, love, enthusiasm – providing that care 24/7, and they deserve a break.

My children noticed my Lenten fast right away. They know I don’t like iced tea very much, yet I was drinking it a lot. So when they asked, I told them what it was all about.

I told them that there isn’t any way I can sacrifice enough to repay the debt Jesus paid on a Friday before Easter … but this is a way that helps others a little, and helps me remember – a lot, and often.

I’ve been faithful to the fast. I don’t know if I could have been as faithful if I had tried to fast like my blogging buddy Travis Stanley, who gave up blogging. And he has been faithful, to the point that I haven’t even seen him comment on others’ blogs for the whole season.

That just might have been too much of a sacrifice to ask of myself.

Maybe next year.

Because I’ve been very blessed by this fast. I don’t see myself giving up sacrifice for Lent any more.

And I’m thankful, more than anything else, that Jesus didn’t.

At a party – a wedding party, no less – the traditional first century beverage was the blood of the grape, distilled and refined and served with generosity.

Jesus, his mother Mary and friends were in attendance at one in Cana of Galilee (way up on the wrong side of Samaria and a good walk from home in Nazareth) when the wine ran out.

Respectfully – as was the custom of the time, no doubt – she actually made no request. She simply went to Him and shared with Him the bad news: “They have no more wine.”

Did He divine her thoughts? Did He have to, or did He just know what she wanted as a son knows a mother’s heart? He answered her fondly: “Dear woman, why do you involve me? My time has not yet come.”

She had planted the seed. Whether He stood there or moved on, we aren’t told. But she turned to the servants and told them: “Do whatever he tells you.”

Was Mary just concerned about friends hosting a wedding party who were suddenly in an embarrassing situation? Did she just have confidence in His ability to stealthily pass the hat? Were the guests already soused and rowdy, and apt to riot if the news became known? Had she seen Him do something supernatural and super-quickly to stem an emergency before? Was she pressing Him to make himself known? To reveal His glory so His friends would believe in Him? That seemed to be His interpretation.

It certainly was the one which proved true. As obedient to His mother as He was to His Father, He looked around for an opportunity and spotted six big 20- or 30-gallon stone jars nearby, usually filled with clean water for dipping out to wash one’s hands during the long wedding party. This late in the party – the guests doubtless overstaying their welcome when the wine ran out – the jars were no longer filled. He told the servants, “Fill the jars with water.”

So they filled each one to the brim. Then He told them to draw some out and take it to the caterer.

Does it matter to you or anyone else whether the miracle was in the pouring or the dipping or the tasting? Did it matter to the servants, or to Jesus, or to Mary? What was the caterer’s opinion?

The caterer tasted what was brought to him, and was probably pretty well put out. He didn’t know where it came from, and he didn’t deign to ask the servants. So he pulled the bridegroom aside and told him that most people bring out the good stuff first and then the cheap stuff later, after everyone has already had too much to drink. “But you’ve saved the best stuff till now!” he exclaimed.

The best stuff.

Kegs of it. Maybe 120 – 180 gallons. Enough to keep the party going a long, long time.

Don’t get me wrong. This is no diatribe in defense of overdoing it with alcohol. It’s not a demand to serve wine rather than grape juice in the cup you drink from during Communion. It’s just an interesting situation to me.

The Son of God chose to perform His first miracle at a wedding party in Cana of Galilee, and He chose to exchange water for wine. Not cheap wine. But the good stuff. The best stuff.

His mother wouldn’t have had it any other way.

It wouldn’t be the last miracle He performed while in that body. In fact, for His last one He chose to exchange death for life. Not cheap, watered-down, sour, vinegar-y ‘take-away-a-little-pain- while-You’re-dying-on-a-cross- as-Your-mother-watches-You-bleed’ life. But the good stuff; the eternal stuff; the stuff that lasts and is worth having forever. The best life.

His Father wouldn’t have approved of anything less.

– from the account in John 2:1-11

(Nagged by a comment made by Fred Peatross on his blog months ago that Christian bloggers don’t seem to talk about Jesus very much, I’ve decided to start a new blog to pursue the quest started here. You can find it at this link: What Would Jesus Do Next?)

A promise once made to the mortal and lost
A present paid for at extravagant cost
A future for those who have already died
A new life for those who feel dead inside
 
A lie to all those who will not believe truth
A fairy tale to those who’ve outgrown their youth
A threat to all those who invest in today
A detour to those who must make their own way
 
A wholeness of body that can’t be destroyed
A perfectness filling an imperfect void
A reality that’s mostly unrealized
A treasure reserved for those dearly prized
 
A nail-mark still seen in His feet and His hands
A life filled with gratitude that it demands
A purpose, a mission for those He would send
A worship beginning … that never can end
 

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” – I Peter 1:3-5