One of the most profound bits of advice I have encountered is in Darryl Tippens’ new book Pilgrim Heart: “Let go.”

He is careful to explain that the person who gave it to him was not advising letting go of the end of the rope he found himself clinging to, but to let go of the frustration, helplessness, and overwhelming imperative need for self-sufficiency in a predicament beyond his control.

Let go. And trust God. Empty yourself.

Go kenotic, not psychotic.

What I wanted to do with this post is not what needs to be done. So as I put my fingers to the keyboard, with a good warmed-over anger seething and the eloquent riposts flowing and the self-righteous indignation honed to a slicing edge …

… unbidden, the words “Let go” came to my mind and heart from the pages of Pilgrim Heart I had read again earlier this week.

Let go.

Not Obi-Wan’s “Let go of your feelings”; not Jean-Luc Picard’s “Let the past be the past”; not the Beatles’ “Let it be.”

Just “let go.”

Why is it so hard to let go?

Why is it so hard to trust the One who formed you in the womb, has seen to your every need and perhaps permitted too many of your desires, and has sent His own dear Child to take the blame for your selfishness when your desires became more important than others’ needs?

Well, here it is: the post I didn’t intend to write.

I won’t regret it later, like the one I had to remove some time back.

You won’t know for sure what it was that I did intend to write, because I won’t post it later.

Because, for this one time, I just let go. And you know what?

It really does feel better.

It’s been a year, and a little more.

Do you remember A Christian Affirmation?

Did it rock your world? Did you rush to sign? Did you hold your breath to await the fallout? Did you pray that it would succeed in strengthening and uniting the fellowship of the Churches of Christ? Was it worth the price of a full-page ad in The Christian Chronicle and of a Web site?

It didn’t do much for me. I quietly sent my own response, and the signers of A Christian Affirmation were kind enough to post it on their site:

I would much rather have seen a document proposing the convening or committing of the best minds, hearts, prayers, wealth and other resources among us toward the proposition of inspiring, training and leading members of the body of Christ in telling His story to people who have never heard it nor perceived their own need for the benefits it offers.

That would be a project worthy of the leadership who signed “A Christian Affirmation” and of the approval and affirmation of many, many Christians. I believe it would have greater potential in motivating and uniting than this document’s ability to do so. However, I will borrow the wisdom of Gamaliel regarding the document: if it is of men, it will come to nothing; if it is of God, it would be pointless to oppose it.

Somewhat less gracefully, I posted a response some have felt was a parody of the Affirmation called One Christian’s Affirmation, and I have no quarrel with that word to describe it.

My opinion hasn’t changed, upon rereading the document more than a year later – though I am less proud of what I was feeling when I posted that second response. In fact, the whole idea has become a bit repellent to me: the idea of creating documents of policy and minimal requirement, full of vague wording that everyone can agree upon for the sake of everyone being right together and therefore united.

The whole value of having varied opinions on matters of opinion; of gaining perspective and strength through dialogue; of being blessed and matured by the interchange of ideas … is simply lost in such an approach.

I was curious to see if hundreds had “signed” the document by e-mail since its inception. I counted 53, in addition to the 24 original signatories, some of whom are siblings in Christ whose words and works have blessed me.

(Some, whose signatures there were a surprise to me.)

So maybe I was right about it having little value in forging unity.

Maybe they were right about it having great value.

The Affirmation did provoke us to briefly dialogue about some things … maybe until the reality descended upon us that virtually no one outside of Christ and very few people who have called on His name know or give a flying hoot about our fellowship’s “distinctive” opinions – or our petty squabbles and divisions – except those who cite them as evidence of our inability to love each other, and therefore as evidence that perhaps Jesus wasn’t the Christ, the Son of God, after all.

Maybe the Affirmation proved in an unintended way – a less-than-earth-shaking number of signers, ultimately – that what we share in common belief is so much more important than what we do not share in common opinion.

_{Postscript: Don’t use the old URL for the Christian Affirmation. It evidently was allowed to expire, or was hacked by German-language porno promoters. Oh, and Howard Norton is signed up twice.}

One of the elements of The DaVinci Code book/movie phenomenon that has caused a lot of controversy is an allusion to “the Sacred Feminine.”

Other religions have gods and goddesses; a few – like some of the Gnostic writings – actually elevate the feminine as superior to the masculine in deity as well as humanity. But Christianity does not, this work tells us; it’s a men-only leadership club that doesn’t recognize the human feminine, let alone the Sacred Feminine.

What is the Sacred Feminine?

Wikipedia describes it as a concept “rooted in the idea that all life flows through those bodies in nature that are feminine:”

Philosophically, following the path of the Sacred Feminine calls on followers to embrace somewhat essentialist views of spiritual femininity. Cooperation is valued over confrontation, nurturing over domination, peace over war, creativity over destruction. And while these concepts are reductionist and essentialist, followers believe that these concepts must be brought into balance with the predominant patriarchal power structure in contemporary culture.

That may sound prejudicial and gender-incorrect, but as a reaction to centuries of what its adherents perceive as male-dominated culture, perhaps it can be understood as having some basis, and a reasonable emphasis on balance.

And while detractors (inside and outside of Christianity) may snort that there is no such thing as the Sacred Feminine, I beg to differ.

The Sacred Feminine is real, just as real a part of scripture as salvation by grace through faith. And though I don’t buy into a conspiracy theory that it’s been suppressed, I do believe it has been neglected.

It’s a real yearning on the part of many women (and a number of men!) who perceive an imbalance in the description offered in scripture of God the Father, Christ the Son and even the Holy Spirit referred to in the masculine by Jesus.

If we’ll look carefully, we’ll find the Sacred Feminine there, too.

It’s not the Gnostics’ Sophia (wisdom) or – forgive me, ZOE Group – Zoe (life) that is the Sacred Feminine.

It’s not childbearing that makes the feminine nature more godlike or closer to God than the masculine … anymore than it’s the tendency to be authoritative and to claim omniscience that makes the male more like God.

It’s more like the old Pogo comic strip punch line, “We have met the enemy – and he is us!” … with a twist.

The Sacred Feminine isn’t the enemy.

But it is us.

It’s God’s people. It’s us. As Israel in the Old Testament, we were the unfaithful bride. (See Jeremiah 3, Hosea 1 and others.)

As the followers of Jesus since his incarnation, we were ransomed and taken back and intimately washed. (Remember that embarrassing bath metaphor in Ephesians 5?)

We’re the bride of Christ. In the Revelation to John, the Visionary sees us coming down from heaven, a bridal city encrusted with jewels and pearls, ready to mee the Bridegroom. Before that, we appeared as a woman in travail giving birth to a man child and fleeing to the wilderness for protection from a destroyer. We’ve been washed, clothed, decorated, and given a garden with the river of life embanked by groves of the tree of life – the one Adam and Eve never got to touch.

We’re “sacred” in the sense of being set apart, sanctified, forgiven, washed – not by our own wit, power or righteousness – but by His. We become immortal, divine, reigning with Him forever and ever.

And that reunion restores the balance that creation has lacked for so long.

Some of Gnosticism’s creation stories posit a far superior Eve created by one goddess or another, breathing life into limp Adam – then being villified and blamed for the fall in the Garden which, for various reasons in each version, wasn’t her fault.

Perhaps you’ve encountered the same kind of idiotic, chauvinistic sermon which probably gave rise to that myth as a reaction, centuries ago. Don’t fall for either stupid extreme.

Eve was created by the Godhead to be from Adam’s side, at Adam’s side. To her credit: when she was tempted, she did not fall prey to the temptation of selfishness. She wanted to share the fruit (misrepresented to her as something wonderfully good and able to level the playing field with the God-parent who loved them) with her husband.

I have to wonder – given masculine-kind’s predelictions – would Adam have shared a purportedly “good thing” if the serpent had pulled him aside to convince him? If he had doubts, at least we can credit him with being willing to share in the responsibility and risk with her.

Just as Christ (the last Adam) was willing not only to share, but to shoulder, all of the risk for his beloved bride.

It isn’t scriptural – and it is blatantly gender-incorrect – but it is also a telling moment in Mark Twain’s The Diary of Adam and Eve when the mother of mankind has passed on and her husband of many centuries mourns in tribute to her that wherever she was, was Eden.

And Christ, the Bridegroom of Heaven, feels exactly the same way about His Sacred Feminine.

By the way, how do you know that I exist?

You read my blog. Someone has to write it. Therefore it must be me. Right?

But how do you know it’s me? How do you know it’s the me that I have represented myself to be, here, with these very pixels? Have you ever met me? Have you ever sat at a table with me and eaten a burger with me? Even if you have, was it enough to get to know me well enough that you’d swear in court that the person you met is the same one who writes this blog?

How do you know I’m telling the truth?

Do you know someone who knows me better than you do? Can you really trust them? How well do they know me?

How do you – or they – know that I’ve done the things I’ve said I’ve done, or been the person I’ve described here, or that I’m not an amalgam of several other bloggers who all log in with the same user name and password, edited by one particular partner for style?

If I do exist ….

How do you know I went to Harding? Married twice? Lost my dad to a coronary episode? Have two adopted children? Attend a church? Used to watch too much Star Trek?

How do you know I wasn’t fathered by a Roman soldier, don’t have an identical twin brother named Thomas, didn’t marry a nice Jewish girl named Mary and start a divine dynasty, and didn’t fake my own death or coerce one of my close friends into orchestrating it so that I could be free of this corrupted mortal body?

Is it possible that you actually believe what some others say who have met me, talked to me or even know me pretty well? That you swallow wholesale what they have to say about me because they have no real reason to lie to you about me? That you accept without demand for proof that I live fairly transparently and am, for the most part, a WYSIWYG kind of person?

Is it conceivable that you believe I exist and write this blog because all of the other possibilities fail to meet Occam’s Razor; that they’re too complex and improbable to be of consequence?

Is it acceptable to do so because I am really a person of relatively minor consequence – but if I started making difficult demands on you and claimed to hold your destiny in my hands and proved that I loved you deeply and completely by taking an extravagantly sacrifical loss in order to profit you … wouldn’t it just be a whole lot easier to say, “Look, I’m not even sure Keith Brenton exists. It’s just a name on a blog, after all.

“There’s no proof he was ever real.

“Who would do something like that, anyway?”

Who, indeed?

Sad to say, it almost certainly wouldn’t be me.

It’d be the One I try so desperately and so pathetically to emulate.

It’d be the ultimately WYSIWYG Person.

It’d be the One who took the loss for my profit.

It’d be You-know-Who.

The church I grew up attending in Indianapolis built a new building about forty-two years ago. I can still remember – not long after it had been built – an evening when my dad, an elder there, came home from a meeting at that new building and told my mom about it, still looking bemused and a little baffled.

His meeting, you see, was with a lady from another church within our fellowship, a church that was convinced that we did everything wrong. She had been told at her church that we had built a bowling alley in the basement of our new building. Ever gracious, my dad gave her a full tour of the new building, assuring her that no bowling alley had ever been planned or constructed there. (There was an extremely long and wide hallway in the basement serving classrooms and a fellowship hall/kitchen which, during the foundation and wall-building, might have looked suspiciously like … a hallway.)

At the close of the tour, he asked the lady if she had any questions. She was troubled that she had been told something untrue, but she had no questions. So he asked her one: “What exactly would be wrong with having a bowling alley in the basement of our building, if we used it to provide good, clean entertainment for the inner-city kids in our neighborhood?” She wasn’t happy about the kitchen being there, but she had no answer to that question, either.

I stand by the wisdom of my late dad.

There are many of my brothers and sisters at my home church, now – and more who have left it – who have been uncertain about whether it was wise or even right to build a Family Life Center with a gymnasium and cafe, along with needed classroom space. Those are legitimate concerns, and there was a time when I shared them. It cost a great deal of money. It costs money to maintain. Certainly the money could have been spent in many other ways – but I should point out that my home church spends about two-thirds of the congregation’s gifts on mission outreach.

To me, the FLC is one of those outreaches. It is built; it has been open a couple of months; it is used wisely and almost constantly to welcome the community – and its potential to do so is just beginning to be tapped.

To me, the sin is not in building an edifice for God – whether it is a magnificent cathedral, double-wide trailer; concrete-block utilitarian modern monstrosity or equatorial mud hut; with kitchen or cafe; with bowling alley or Family Life Center.

The sin would be in building it and not using it to His glory.

Many times I have been guilty of “only-one-way” thinking – and this is just one example. There’s only one way to worship. Only one way to evangelize. Only one way to use a church building. My way.

Or the highway.

And I have often been convinced that my way was indisputably God’s way, God’s only way, when on closer examination … it became obvious that there were some matters which He leaves up to our individual judgment, creativity, conscience.

Individual. That’s an important word. Because His word also makes it plain that when we use our judgment on a matter and later violate our conscience regarding it, that’s wrong. So I’m trying to be less critical of other viewpoints, and more persuasive about God’s trust in us, and in our own judgment.

As chilling as it may seem:

• When it comes to sharing the story of Jesus, we are Plan A.
• There is no Plan B.
• What we bind on earth will (be?/already have been?) bound in heaven.
• From the Garden, through the desert, to the cafe table and volleyball court, God’s people have chosen in their day whom they will serve – and often, how.

I know how my dad chose for his house. Because sometimes my family served in that kitchen. And sometimes we served people who came in off the inner-city streets, and just needed a good meal.

But I should tell you the rest of his story.

To the befuddled woman who had come to see the truth for herself about my boyhood church building and could only be dismayed about its kitchen, Dad pressed yet another question: “You have a water fountain in your church building, don’t you? It’s only there to provide refreshment and pleasure for the people who attend … not there, specifically, to worship God, is it …?”

Dad looked a little regretful when he recounted the story to Mom: “I hope she doesn’t go back and convince them to take out that water fountain.”

I used to have quite a cache of them in my head, ready to use at the drop of a phone receiver … or rather, just before.

But time and the no-call list have eroded the cache, and I’d like to think that a kinder, gentler nature emerging in me has helped wipe out a few of them.

Before all of that, there was I time when I did not hesitate to answer the incessant, invasive ding-a-lings:

“Well, if you knew it was a wrong number, why did you dial it?”

“Fascinating as it sounds to spend hours trapped in Nowhere, Florida listening to some failure-in-life raving about the features of the time-share condo you wish to saddle me and my progeny with forever, I’m afraid I shall have to decline your kind invitation.”

“Did you just belch while you were talking to me? Just now? Did you? How rude! Don’t you ever dare to call this number again. I have caller ID and I am not too proud to deliver a world-shuddering belch in response to your rudeness. You’re just lucky I haven’t had a carbonated beverage for the last several hours.”

“That’s really interesting, but … do you like the sound of my voice? I mean, do you find it pleasant? Would you say even attractive? Could you go so far as to describe it as irresistible?”

“Yes; right. Listen, do you actually get paid to do this or do you just enjoy annoying people?”

“Oh, thank you for calling. I’m not really interested in what you’re saying but I don’t have any friends and the friends I do have don’t call anymore and sometimes it’s just so reassuring to hear another human voice after talking to no one but my cats all day and night ….”

“Uh-huh. If your supervisor is handy, would you tell them something for me? Would you tell them that you’re quitting this dead-end job and finding a real career position somewhere you can actually help people, and put your God-given talents to good use benefitting humanity and if your supervisor isn’t a complete idiot, that perhaps he or she should fire the whole lot of you and you could all go job-hunting together like real colleagues in a support group, you know?”

“No, I’m sorry. They don’t live here anymore. We killed them and buried them under the … but perhaps I’ve taken enough of your time already.”

Those were the days. But they’re gone, and good riddance. Time to get those nasty retorts out of my head and tell them good-bye and put them here in pixels.

(Just in case those good old days decide they want to call back.)

I caught a few minutes – my favorite few minutes – of the movie Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner a few days ago. It’s the part where Sidney Poitier’s character, John Prentice, finally confronts his father (who opposes his engagement to a white girl) by saying: “Dad … You think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself … as a man.”

This post isn’t about race. It’s about identity.

I grew up in a church that was somewhat uncomfortable among fellow congregations proudly bearing the sign “Church of Christ.” Our preaching minister, David H. Bobo, was not exclusivist in his view of fellowship and brotherhood. At the time, my parents – and my late dad was an elder there – tended toward that exclusionary view.

How many I times I heard David Bobo recite by heart (not just memory) the poem that closes “… but love and I had the wit to win; we drew a circle that drew them in!”

There were times when I wished I could tell my folks how I felt; conjure the words I would have patterned after John Prentice’s revelation:

“Mom … Dad … You think of yourselves as members of the Church of Christ. I think of myself … as a Christian.”

Dad has passed on, and I think he was moving toward a wider definition of Christianity in his later years. Mom has certainly begun to.

These days I find a less-cultured metaphor in an ALLTEL television commercial: seeing myself wanting to move to embrace those icons of other fellowships that I have included in my “friendship circle;” longing to answer their objections “But that’s not the way we do business!” with the same confident reply of the ALLTEL guy:

“It is now.”

What do you think of yourself as?

I think I’ve found a new ministry.

But I don’t fly on planes often enough to put it into practice.

On my Tuesday flight from Dallas to L.A., I happened to be seated close to Victor and Evelyn Knowles as well as Dwight and Charme Robarts – all guest presenters at the Pepperdine Lectures where I was headed.

I also happened to be sitting by a sweet young lady who was reading one of Dr. Phil’s books. I don’t know which one; I’m not familiar with ’em. From what I could read on the back cover you could have titled it Be Your Best You.

Well, back up. She was trying to read one of Dr. Phil’s books. She would read a few paragraphs, then fall asleep. This happened three or four times, and one time when she awakened she saw that I was about three-quarters of the way through an excellent book, Rumours of Another World by another Phil, last name Yancey. She asked to read the back cover and how I liked it.

I was really liking it. It’s all about those little hints and evidences in the world around us that God is real, and is behind it all: the complexity of the human body … our innate sense of right and wrong … the motivation of Jesus Christ. I told her so. She smiled, and said it sounded interesting.

I finished the book just as the plane touched down. I really liked it. It was one of those books that I just knew I would read over and over.

But then I surprised myself.

I closed the book and said, “I really enjoyed this book.” Then I handed it to her. “And I hope you do too.”

She thanked me several times, and seemed genuinely grateful.

I told her “You can’t keep a good book to yourself.”

I had resisted the urge to ask her, Dr. Phil-style, if her book was working for her; obviously it wasn’t. Maybe the other Phil’s book will.

Okay, it’s not much of a ministry. I don’t even know if she’ll read the book. She might, and it might not touch her heart at all. Don’t complain to me that I didn’t preach the gospel to her right there in front of several better-qualified witnesses. There’s only so much you can communicate while a plane is waiting to taxi into a gate, even at Dallas-Ft. Worth.

So I asked her what put her on a plane and she told me about her sister’s upcoming wedding and I surprised myself again by being genuinely interested rather than pretending I was interested, because she had been gracious enough to accept my gift. And we chatted until we deplaned; crossed paths at the airport a couple more times before my Thrifty Rental van picked me up … and we’ll probably never see each other again this side of heaven.

But Who knows?

As I said, I think I’ve discovered a new ministry. But I don’t fly on planes often enough to put it into practice. Maybe if you fly on planes or ride buses and trains or sit in waiting rooms and coffee shops more than I do, you could.

Just give someone a book that you love, then tell ’em why God inspires you through it.

Then tell ’em you have a friend named Keith who says “You can’t keep a good book to yourself.”

And, if you do … drop me an e-mail and let me know how it’s workin’ for ya.

I’ve been preoccupied with a lot of work that really needs to be done and that really takes a lot of time. I haven’t blogged faithfully – to my readers or my Savior – for a while, and I truly apologize.

While I’ll be taking a break this next week or so, in an attempt to figure out whether I am old enough to be dreaming dreams or still young enough to see visions, please enjoy these rather random quotes I’ve enjoyed finding on that subject. (Most – except for the last one – are favorites of Carl Townsend, founder of Strategic Resources Ministry.)

For the revelation [vision] awaits an appointed time, it speaks [as to kindle a fire] of the end. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.
Habakkuk 2:3 NIV

What could be worse than being born without sight? Being born with sight and no vision.
Hellen Keller

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for a decade, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.
Chinese Proverb

Individuals and churches that are content to operate solely on the basis of their mission in life generally flounder because their perspective is too broad, too ill-defined. Those that focus on their vision as marching orders have a much higher chance of success because they establish more realistic priorities and because they are more likely to be people-centered.
George Barna

For reasons I do not fully understand, some power is released through setting positive goals that would otherwise remain dormant.
C. Peter Wagner

Soon after the completion of Disney World someone said, “Isn’t it too bad that Walt Disney didn’t live to see this!” Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios replied. “He did see it – that’s why it’s here.”

The future does not belong to those who are content with today. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason, and courage in a personal commitment.
Robert Kennedy

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Proverbs 29:18

Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.
Robert Greenleaf

I think there is a world market for about five computers.
Thomas Watson, 1950s president of IBM

If you stay committed, your dreams can come true. I left home at 17 and had nothing but rejections for 25 years. I wrote more than 20 screen plays.
Michael Blake (Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Dances With Wolves)

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out they would have had opportunity to return. But as it was, they desired a better country.
Hebrews 11:15

Men and women do not possess visions of the future. They are possessed by them.
Robert Bundy

And the Lord said to me, “Write my vision on a billboard, large and clear, so that anyone can read it while running and rush to tell others.”
Habakkuk 2:2b

The absolute goal of vision for ministry is to glorify God.
George Barna

In Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Alice gets to a fork in the road and she asks the cat. “Which way do I go?” “Where are you going?,” asks the cat. “I don’t know.” “Then it really doesn’t make any difference,” replies the cat.

The Church is, by definition, open to all. A vision statement always focuses, and therefore excludes. There will always, then, be some fallout. Some people will always react to forming a vision statement because of the exclusion sense.
True visionaries are never lukewarm.
George Barna

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created – created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar

Tell me what your vision of the future and I will tell you what you are.
Frederick L. Polak

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created – created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and destination.
John Schaar

Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.
Robert Greenleaf

It all comes from the mind. I’ve seen the most incredible success stories – because a person had a dream and it was so powerful no one could touch it. He’d feel it, believe it, think about it all day and night. That would inspire him to do things necessary to get the results he wanted.
Arnold Schwarzenegger

The pilot light is out on my flame of ambition.
Winnie the Pooh

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill

Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.
Doug Larson (Far Side cartoonist)

God does not place timetables on how quickly He expects us to capture his vision. In fact, He may take more pleasure in our attempt to know His mind than in our eventual ability to capture that insight. The key is that we develop a life-style characterized by the vision-capturing process- that is a life in which He is preeminent, in which our desires are to know and please Him and our activities center around our relationship with Him.”
George Barna

The major credit I think Jim and I deserve is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It’s true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.
Francis Crick (co-proposer of the double-helix structure of DNA)

People will never attain what they cannot see themselves doing.
Karen Ford

That which holds our attention determines our action.
William James, Psychologist

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray
Henry David Thoreau

People need BHAGs – big hairy audacious goals.
Jim Collins, Jerry Porras (co-authors of Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies)

I have never been disabled in my dreams.
Christopher Reeve

The future belongs to those who believe in their dream.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.
Theodore Hesburgh

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
Carl Jung

Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say “Why not?”
Robert Kennedy

I would be delighted with my trifocals if one pair of lenses simply let me see the world clearly; the second let me see the world as others see it; and the third let me see it as God does.
Keith Brenton

“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

When the full story of Mary in the Garden was read aloud in worship this morning, I was moved to tears by this simple verse. It had never struck me this way before.

Mary, no matter what it took, would have brought Jesus’ body back to the tomb. Even if she had to do it herself – since Peter and John and the other women had left the scene.

‘I will get him,’ she said.

It was one of those moments of amusing spiritual irony – she was speaking to Jesus, but couldn’t recognize Him – made all the more poignant by her simple spunk and deep affection for Him.

And I asked myself: Would I go and get Him?

With the seal on the tomb broken and the governor’s authority breached and the lynch mob still passionate from their victory in executing Him, would I go by myself and get Him?

Do I “get” Him today?

Do I really, fully comprehend who He is; what motivates Him; how humanity balances divinity in His nature?

Of course not.

How many times have I encountered Him, thinking He was just the gardener; not recognizing Him as the planter of Eden?

No, I may not “get” Him today or tomorrow or even in this life.

But some day I will.