The In-Between Day by Lorraine Triggs

“Easter’s coming,” I whispered on Good Friday as we left the church in silence and darkness. Soon my social media feeds will post assurances that Easter is coming—a hope-filled reminder that darkness and death are not the last word.

Jesus’ first followers didn’t have the luxury of bypassing Saturday. By the time Saturday dawned, this Easter story of ours had been marred by betrayal, bitter tears, despair, a Savior who could but didn’t come down from the cross to save himself, and followers who watched him breathe his last. We have Joseph of Arimathea who went to work quickly and secretly to take away Jesus’ body, which he and Nicodemus wrapped in linen cloths with spices, not with resurrection in mind, but because of the Jewish day of preparation.

For some of us, the solemnity of Good Friday quickly gives way on Saturday to Easter’s triumphant song, that “Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia! Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!” For most all of us, Saturday is the day we spend getting ready for Resurrection Day in one way or another.

But for some, ours is still the cross and grave. We relate more to loss, bitter tears and fear than we do to hope and joy. We sit in Saturday’s darkness, painfully aware of its suffocating silence and uncertainty. For me, it’s the uncertainty that creates low expectations that nothing will change for a sick family member. Am I am going to be perpetually stuck in this bleak in-between day of Easter?

On this in-between day, women who had followed Jesus now trailed Joseph of Arimathea to the tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary watched him lay Jesus’ body just so and then roll a great stone to its entrance and leave. Matthew 27:61 describe the two Marys sitting there opposite the tomb, sitting through the shock and grief of Saturday. Eventually, they went home to prepare spices and ointment to take to the tomb the next morning and lovingly attend to Jesus' corpse.

How confusing those moments must have been when the tomb was empty. There was no body to tend. The costly jar had been broken, tears had already washed his feet and they were nowhere to be found.

I would like to think that at some point, the burial spices and ointment went every which way when they saw an angel of the Lord sitting on the stone they were sure Joseph had rolled to the tomb's entrance. Instead of a body to tend, they were greeted with the news that the lifeless body no longer existed. Death and loss were gone. "He is not here, for he has risen as he said. Come, see the place where he lay." (Matthew 28:6) Saturday's shock and grief gave way to Easter as the Risen Savior greeted them.

Perhaps Saturday’s expectation isn’t that Easter’s coming, but that the sunrise has visited us from on high “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79) That darkness isn’t darkness to God, and that night we’re sitting in is as bright as day, that fear and joy and hope are part of Easter expectations, and we can look for a return visit from on high.

As kids, my sisters and I dubbed any large grey clouds with shafts of sunlight beaming through them “Second Coming Clouds.” Actually, these are Crepuscular rays—“God rays”—sunbeams that originate when the sun is just below the horizon, during twilight hours. These God rays are “noticeable when the contrast between light and dark is most obvious,” like between Easter Saturday and Easter morning.

Today, for all who sit in the darkness, ours is the cross, the grave, the skies.

Alleluia.

Moving Across Town by Wil Triggs

My parents moved across town just in time for me to go to high school. I don’t know for sure if they did it so I would go to what they perceived as a better school, but at the time, I thought that’s why we moved. Self-focused, I know now, but it seemed real.
 
The move also meant I lost the apricot tree in our back yard. Actually, we lost the back yard entirely. Our new place was the front side of a duplex; behind us, instead of a yard, there was a four-unit apartment and behind that, a garage structure with parking for the cars of any of the residents who wished to pay extra for covered parking. We chose to save money and park on the street. The garage was too small for our pre-economy-car sedan anyway. I used to joke that it was made for the Model Ts or As from the days when cars first hit the market.
 
When we looked out the kitchen window onto the street in front of the house, we saw the slender trunk of the palm tree. This new home was not only within walking distance of my high school, but also just three blocks from the ocean. Growing up, we always had to drive to the beach. Now, with this move, I could walk there. The palm tree reminded me every time I looked at it that we were just a few yards from the ocean.
 
From our window, that tree didn’t look much different from the telephone pole that stood a few feet north of it, both within view. Two different columns, that’s it.
 
I didn’t pay attention to the palm tree, except on Palm Sunday. Then, I would always look up at the palm branches. The tree was two or three times the height of our one-story duplex. The crown of the tree was the top where the branches and the fruit were. The city we lived in would send a utility truck with a cherry-picker around once every year to cut away the branches that had died and dried out at the base of the crown. I suppose this was their equivalent of our snow removal fleet—their palm-tree trimming crew. They ground up the branches, and drove them away, so I never got to hold one or wave one. But they were big, and I imagined them to be somewhat heavy.
 
Over time, I’ve become aware that there are different types of palm trees—from the ones that take a crew to cut down to the gentle palms of green the children wave when they process through the aisles singing hosannas year after year. In Kindergarten we make them out of green craft paper. The cloaks and palm branches signaling the good and happy news that the King has finally arrived.
 
What kind of branches did they wave on that most significant parade in all of history? One man, sitting on a donkey, coats on the ground, palm branches waving. This parade of One is marked all over the world. Not everyone has access to palm branches, and make other botanical choices: olives, willows, yews, even boxwood stand in for the palm branches in places where they are not available.
 
Wherever in the world there are churches, the people of the churches are waving something to reenact in one fashion or another Jesus’ royal ride into Jerusalem.
 
In contrast, the Daily Mail reports that “The Gold State Coach will not be used by the King and Queen to travel to Westminster Abbey for their coronation on May 6. 
 
“In a break from tradition, the royal couple will instead travel to the ceremony in another vehicle. They could choose to use the Irish State Coach, which is often used to travel to the state opening of Parliament or might opt for a more comfortable car.”

No coats on the street. No palm branches. I do not think that a donkey is going to be one of the transportation options for Charles and Camilla. The article goes on to say that they will likely use the Gold State Coach to get to Buckingham Palace after the coronation. So, it won’t be a complete break from tradition, and people will be able to see the new king riding in the golden coach.

The king many wanted was not Jesus, but someone more like Charles. Signs of wealth and power are what we come to expect with royalty. Though many will watch this coronation, after a few years it will be mostly forgotten. There will be other coronations to take its place.
 
But Jesus was not like that. We do not forget his journey. One man riding into the town on a donkey knowing that in just a few decades, the city he was riding into was going to be destroyed, knowing that his own cross was just days away, understanding that his friends would abandon and deny him. Then the beating, the nails pounded in.
 
You know the rest. Death—the thing that ends a monarch’s reign, except for this one. This king is a king of love, the only king of his kind in all eternity.
 
Let’s sing Hosanna. Death is not the end of his reign but the beginning. His reign will take us where there is no death. Sweet suffering, loving Jesus, we don't deserve you, but you come anyway. You bring us a better way. Your donkey is better than any golden coach.
 
Wave the palms, whatever kind you want. Willows. Yew. Olive branches. Green construction paper. Throw your garments down onto the road. Our king has come, riding on a donkey . . .
 
“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”
 
From the stable to the cross, this saving king comes in humility, reaching the forgotten, associating with sinners, identifying with the poor, the lost, the animals. King Jesus calls us to follow him in this suffering world and beyond, to his kingdom where palm branches still wave and cloaks are all white.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10)

Under the Bus by Lorraine Triggs

Two separate stories on my news feed recently claimed that Politician A threw Politician B under the bus. Or was it the other way around? No matter, both politicians are now under the bus, which might be a good thing—or not.

As the youngest of three girls, one would think that I would be well acquainted with the underside of a bus—an easy target as it were for blame whenever our sibling skirmishes got out of hand. Fortunately, our mother wasn’t into throwing things or people under buses or other places. As arbitrator, she operated on a single principle when things went awry and none of us were taking responsibility. Obviously, one person was guilty; the second person was guilty by association, and third guilty by her silence.

According to Merriam Webster, “No one is certain where the phrase ‘throw (somebody) under the bus’—meaning to betray or sacrifice a person, particularly for the sake of one’s own advancement, or as a means of safe-guarding one’s own interests—comes from. But there’s probably enough evidence to throw British English under the bus.”

Perhaps the venerable dictionary should have looked elsewhere for the origin of this idiom, such as the Garden of Eden. The serpent intentionally threw Adam and Eve under the bus in the first move to advance his own kingdom. Adam and Eve may not have been as intentional as the serpent, but they were quick to safeguard their own interests to avoid blame.

It’s remarkable how much we resemble our first parents in shifting blame. It’s a bit like the advice my car insurance agent always gives—don’t admit fault—and if a bus happens to pass by, all the better. Even more remarkable is how subtle we are at self-advancement. Something goes wrong and we jump to the head of the line—not to admit fault but to clear our good name. It’s our kingdom, uh, our reputation at stake.

I take another look at Merriam Webster again and read the words betrayal and sacrifice. This is the language of a promise made and a promise fulfilled that the one we despised, rejected and didn’t esteem would be the one who would heal us with his wounds. 

In the language of another garden at another time, where a reputation wasn’t considered a thing to be grasped, where the Son, like his Father in the cool of the day in that first garden, came to seek and save the lost.

It’s not Merriam Webster, but the Bible, God's living Word, where the language of grace and of mercy and rescue and restoration begins to make a miraculous and unfathomable kind of sense. It is there that we see the Stone the builders rejected become the cornerstone in a whole new way of life. It is there that God himself looks, even goes under the bus, or wherever we’ve been hiding. Jesus finds us and keeps taking the guilt and blame on himself. God who forgives and brings us under his rule and kingdom, the hiding place where we find ourselves transformed, a people no longer in darkness but living, working, walking today in the place of his marvelous light

A Saturday Prayer

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Holy God, Lord most gracious,
We are in great need and you have extended your beneficent invitation:
“Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden.”
That describes us: we are overloaded with the cares of our existence.
We are creatures of need, but there is a problem . . .
What we see as our need is not the way you see it.
We see our need as more money,
we see our need as better health,
we see our need as a promotion,
as greater respect from our family,
as less anxiety—less stress—less pressure.
You see our need as prioritizing:
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
We confess that really, deep down, we don’t love you with all our hearts.
Lord, we see our sin. Forgive us.
We want to love you first and foremost.
Help us to experience the joy of love unblemished, a life lived to please God.
We pray that we will know you, whom to know is life more abundant.
We want to join with the psalmist in saying,
As the deer longs for streams of water,
So I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the Living God.
Amen.

Vacation Homes by Wil and Lorraine Triggs

The HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes is closed to entries for this year.

As far as Wil knows, he and Lorraine will not be the lucky owners of this year’s giveaway, which their website describes as “a grand mountain escape packed with high-end design and located in Morrison, Colorado.”
 
He knows this because he did not enter to win.

Lorraine on the other hand, did enter, and she’s still holding out hope that we’re about to win the grand prize.
 
There were a few years when we entered the sweepstakes twice a day on two different HGTV-affiliated websites, imagining winning a home much larger than the one we lived in year-round and making that our vacation spot every year, even if we weren't wild about the home's location or design.
 
We have yet to win the dream home. All we've won so far is a lot of emails from paint, furniture, plumbing and deck companies.

This year, though, we actually did take a vacation. Before that, it was sometime before COVID that we actually had a real vacation, not long weekends or half days, but a week or more.
 
So it’s been long enough that we’ve been looking back on that trip, how we took our dog with us and spent most days writing, with breaks for coffee, sweets, ice cream, fixing the car’s dead battery, visiting a health food store to look at vitamins, going to a farmer’s market and discovering a privately run bookstore that was half used, half new, with a little of everything in it. Oh, and that Mexican restaurant that seemed like it was only for Mexicans, but yes, they would take our money if we wanted to eat there.
 
Mostly, though, in the mornings, we played with words on paper and laptops for longer than we normally allow ourselves. In the afternoon, we traded papers and read what the other had been writing. We’d talk, edit, debate, suggest and then break for dinner.
 
This might not sound like an ideal vacation to very many of you. For us, it was pretty great.
 
Being in the middle of a good time made us think about all the other good times we’d had. With the exception of our honeymoon and pre-9/11 trips to England and missions trips, our other top places to stay have been gifts of one kind or another from friends or family.
 
We have had the privilege of staying in other peoples’ homes, cabins, cottages, whatever you want to call them--friends or family who want to share life with others or bless us with a week of retreat we wouldn’t otherwise have. That probably sounds kind of terrible to those who have vacation memories on cruise ships or the top floor of luxury resorts or excursions.
 
The element of a home as a gift is something we have become familiar with, always on the receiving end of this sweet kind of sharing. Remembering these places has a beautiful sort of nostalgia because those cabins and homes and lodges come with people attached. They aren't dream homes; they're places of reality. They represent places of hope and rest and work in the best possible context—in the context of people who love us and email “The key is under the mat.” Or give us our very own key to their very own place or entrust us with their lone set of keys for a week.
 
Along with that beautiful nostalgia and reality comes a deeper longing for a lasting home, no HGTV designed home, but a reality home “whose designer and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10). It's not a grand prize, but a great and eternal gift. A home where God himself will be with us as our God, and he “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

A Doxology Psalm

Today's Musing comes out of this week's ArtSpace workshop. Participants included teenagers to those in their seventies. Thanks to each of them for their worshipful contributions to this psalm in three parts. We asked everyone to consider the Trinity through metaphor and simile. Consider these, a sampling from the evening, first draft thoughts and images of the God who loves us. 

God the Father
The beginning, always, infinity, reality, light, present.
God is like a firm rock foundation, a perfect just judge, the best friend.
God forgives our sins like a person who is in debt to the master and the master forgives him.
God the Father is like a skyscraper, shining in the sun.
Love, our Creator, Protector, Potter, the strong yet gentle One.
A house that gives us refuge and shelters us from storms.
God the Father is like a fresh-flowing stream.
The Commander, sends forth his word, hosts of heaven,
The Father is like the sun covering his children with warm light that makes the flowers burst from the earth even through snow.
He sees like an eagle and a mouse inside our hearts.
True North,
The master gardener.
Weaver of a stunning tapestry, the universal manager,
The Artist, the Playwright, the Sculptor,
Vast pillar of stone, Canopy of the sky.
 
God the Son
The calm after the storm
Like a David Austin rose, splendor in its beauty
Friend, Life Preserver, Lifeline, Mirror,
Jewel, Strength, Advocate, Defender
The storied warrior, slain in battle, comes home victorious.
A fruitful vine, like a brother
Teacher, firm yet encouraging, showing his love.
Truth, our rescuer.
Jesus is a whirlpool, pulling everything into his dominion.
The hero who rescued me, the glue that holds all things together, the road and the destination.
A desert oasis, a mighty oak, beloved one.
Jesus is like a dog; He walks with us and is always there for us. Faithful.
A protecting brother, our defense attorney, our umbrella from God’s wrath,
The bridge across the bottomless pit of sin to God the Father,
The perfect sacrifice, the creator of earth come to the ruined world; the never-sinner.
The One who hears all who call.
 
God the Holy Spirit
Healer,
Consuming fire, voice of God, like a wind, like a dove.
A whirlwind all around us.
The Holy Spirit is like the snow that blows from the church steeple, softening the deepness of night in his blanket of white.
My helper. A constant companion showing me the way.
An eternal flame, like a piercing beam of light.
Water, breath and wonder.
A rainstorm that refreshes and gives us new energy to persevere.
All-directions wind,
Uplifting breath,
Cleansing, rushing waterfall,
The wind, the white noise to which I fall asleep.
Our stronghold in seemingly empty and void places.
The Holy Spirit whispers in our heart and tells us what we need to do.
The Holy Spirit helps us to overcome the temptations of Satan, sin and this world.
Full of surprises. Intense joyl
He listens to everything we say and turns it into a song that he sings to the Father.
 
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The Theology of Grammar by Lorraine Triggs

As a child, I had a concrete grasp of a story’s viewpoint. First person – that’s me, second person is you, and third person are those other people over there. Obviously, a first-person story was more entertaining and superior to a second- or third-person story, because of its subject matter.

Fortunately, my understanding of viewpoint matured as I gained experience in writing and editing and in reading my trusty bibles—The Chicago Manual of Style and The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style. I highlight sections in the style and usage section. I memorize rules about time constructions and capitalization and hyphenation. (Including this capitalization rule from The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style: “Capitalize the word Bible except for those instances when it is used metaphorically, as in The Audubon guide is the bird lover’s bible.")

At least I think I’ve matured in my child's understanding of viewpoint, and then I open the Bible, which is no metaphorical bible, but God-breathed words that reveal the Word made flesh, not a metaphor but very God of very God.

The fourth stanza of American writer John Updike’s poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” reads:
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

Gospel writer John defines the door in John 10:9, where Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” The resurrection is not a metaphor; it really happened. Jesus is the real door; I get that.

What trips me up is the word anyone. Those third person others standing over there may enter the same door that you and I do, be saved, and go in and out and find pasture. And through my myopic first-person lens, I already have the pasture picked out for them, the grass might not be as verdant as mine, but no bother, it's still a pasture.

But I have walked through the door, and that egocentric first-person viewpoint should bother me. A lot. Jesus’ invitations to come, to go in and out and find pasture, to rise up and walk are for me, you, and the others over there. Jesus preached peace to the far off and to those who were near, and reconciled both to God, eliminating the distinctions between our human viewpoints.

After all, there is only one first-person viewpoint.

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14)

What Happens to Nate Saint? By Wil Triggs

“Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” (Matthew 13:51)
 
In Kindergarten Bible school this weekend, the kids will find out what happened to Nate Saint. I’m doing a two-week missionary story on him. Last Sunday they heard about his life growing up, his love for planes, his invention to drop cargo from large canisters on the wings of the small planes he flew. And then the tentative and cautious contacts with the Auca people. Last week’s story ends in joy, as some of the Aucas receive gifts that kids could relate to—yo-yos, balloons and other toys. Relations between the small band of missionaries and the native tribe seem to be moving forward toward friendship.
 
The children wanted to know what happened next. I think some of them think they know—the Aucas will one by one trust Jesus and the missionaries and the Aucas will live together happily ever after.
 
I know what happens next and they’re about to find out. The end of the story isn’t just that Nate Saint dies, but that afterwards people come to faith. Many others, inspired by the sacrifice of these missionaries, enter missionary service themselves. What happens next is that Nate Saint is killed.
 
I am hesitant, though, and don’t want to tell the kids about the dying part. They seemed content with the story going well. They seemed happy to hear the good stuff. What happens next is sad and scary and wrong. I want to shield them, somehow, from the hard section of the story that seems not right.
 
This is not unlike Jesus dying on the cross. It’s terrible. The disciples go into hiding. Imagine all that was going on in Peter’s mind with his betrayal and Jesus’ arrest and death, and Jesus’ words about resurrection and life running through his mind along with images of Lazarus walking out of a tomb. Peter and the other disciples didn’t reassure each other with “Sunday’s coming,” I don’t think. They had to be besides themselves in grief and shock and wondering what to do next. Death and atonement had to come before resurrection and the Spirit to overcome sin.
 
I have been a Bible school teacher for most of my adult life. I’ve seen that shielding impulse repeated in a lot of curricula through the years. We easily skip over the hard parts. Most of the time it’s not the end of the story, but somewhere in the middle where things move into the shadows.
 
Joseph sold into slavery. The famines that drove his brothers to Egypt to ask for help. Elijah running for his life after he defeated the prophets of Baal. The prophets spoke to people who wouldn’t listen. Four hundred years of silence. Simeon waiting almost his whole life for that one day. The slaughter of the innocents. The martyrdom of Stephen, which is the end of him but the beginning of the church. The apostles sharing the good news and Christ using them in amazing ways before most faced deaths like what Jesus faced.
 
Being a Christian isn’t for wimps, but oftentimes, I feel like a wimp. I am not always ready to face that hard stuff or to tell little ones about it. And there’s something there, too, about perseverance—staying true to him on Wednesday, the traditional hump day of the week, or the errands of Saturday, Sunday after church and before the real first day of the week. Our small group is reading a book where the author says his family has “Tongue-Torched Thursdays,” when their not-so-tamed tongues lash out at one another. Our lives are filled with ordinary days where not much happens. Those are the days where the rubber meets the road. Probably for most of us, today is one of those days. This is the middle of the story, too. Not much is happening and yet everything is happening.
 
The story needs to get hard to be a good story, and we are in the midst of the best story ever. We are part of it. No, we don’t hide the hard stuff. It’s difficult for us to do it justice for our kids or for ourselves. We were wandering around the wilderness with our Kindergarteners for what seems like an eternity, it was really just a few weeks—not even a year, let alone forty, with an entire generation of people dying off before they could cross the Jordan River.
 
God is more patient and long-suffering than we are in the middle our own series of stories. He’s always faithful—with us in the middle days of ordinary life and ever-present with us in the hardest days ever.
 
We look back, but we also look ahead. As we celebrate the Lord’s Table this Sunday, let’s examine ourselves and consider the cup that Jesus drank for us. Let us also look ahead to the day when we are all together celebrating at the marriage table, the end of the story as the beginning of something altogether new.