A warm, half cup of coffee sat in my lap as I listened to Amy share. Surrounded by Bible study friends, I indulged in the extra caffeine while she explained how she'd been led to take communion for 40 days, in a row, at home. Challenged to remember Christ's sacrifice, she focused on His suffering every day, and the experience changed her.
It made me think.
When Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ came out, my pastor encouraged everyone to see it. “I can’t,” I contested, “I don’t go to R rated movies or handled violence well.”
“You need to see it, Susan,” he encouraged.
So, I made a date with my neighbor’s daughter, Meredith, and we sat together, on a top row, as far from the screen and sound as possible. There, I closed my eyes and plugged my ears on occasion to keep from overwhelm.
But Amy’s experience challenged me. How would I change if I started each day by remembering the enormity of Jesus’ sacrifice? The torn flesh? The sharp thorns? The nailed hands and feet? The agonizing loneliness? The stifling weight of our sin?
Somewhere on the hard drive of my brain, my best understanding is stored. But I don’t open that file on a daily basis. Honestly, I don’t want too. It’s too much to take in. My sensitive soul recoils.
Don’t get me wrong… I live for Jesus. I give each day over to Him in prayer. I don't ignore the cross. But I don’t stare into His pain filled eyes and just remember.
But as Amy’s thoughts overflowed, I wondered how I would be changed if I did. And then I heard my name.
“Susan’s lived with a lot of suffering,” Amy contended. “You get what I’m saying, right?"
It was my turn to talk. So I tried to formulate thoughts.
“I think you’re on to something, Amy,” I started. “The more we focus on what Christ did for us, the more our suffering pales. And it’s not just that our suffering becomes manageable in comparison, it’s that our faith changes how we see everything around us.”
And that's really the key; the essence of faith. Seeing everything through eyes of faith that transforms our reality from overwhelming to doable. From depressing to livable. From unfair to acceptable.
From there my thoughts drifted to an analogy I used after I purchased my first wireless printer. The printer eventually sat on a desk upstairs. So, when I pushed a button on my lap top in my kitchen, words floated through the air and ceiling, and then slid out in ink onto a page.
How words float through the air, I don’t know. But somehow, they do.
Which led me to our prayers. We don’t always receive an immediate print out confirmation when we pray. But if man can send words through the air and print them or receive a text reply, it seems all the more pliable to me that our silent prayers travel to their heavenly destination, unhindered.
Invisible thoughts fly around us—and through us—every day. Or at least that’s my perception of how wireless technology works. If we can reduce our inner most thoughts to code that permeates the air we breathe and arrives at another’s phone or lap top or speaker just as we wrote it, how much more can God receive our petitions and respond.
Scientific minds will likely scoff at my analogy, comparing technological breakthroughs to prayer. But I would assert that it takes a bit of imagination to believe what we can't see. And to trust what we can only feel with our hearts.
Which brings me back to Amy and 40 days of communion. Of time spent alone with God, marveling at the sacrifice, the big picture story, the love that surpasses knowledge, and the life given for our own.
Do you get it? I mean really get it? Man, I want to.
All photos courtesy of pixabay.com
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