Resurrection Intersection

It's been called 'The Greatest Story Ever Told'.

A man named Jesus arrives on the planet, born to a poor Jewish couple midst considerable controversy and reports of various unusual events.....things like angel visits and magi visits and wholesale slaughter of innocents at the hands of a jealous king. Jesus grows up to wander the countryside teaching and healing people and collecting something of a following, much to the agitation of the authorities.

At the peak of His popularity, He is betrayed by one of His own, arrested and charged with blasphemy, a crime punishable by death according to the Jews. (It's significant, this charge, because it argues pretty convincingly, that Jesus was claiming to be God, otherwise the Pharisees wouldn't have been so interested.) The Romans get in on it, so the means of death is crucifixion, long and agonizing by any standards, while His followers look on helpless and demoralized.

They put His crushed body into a borrowed tomb, and everyone's thinking that's the end of it. But the same kind of various and unusual events that marked His arrival, burn that third morning into history like the blinding of an eclipse. And in an act that, if it's true, changes EVERYTHING, Jesus walks out of the tomb, radiating life, breathing power -- God-like.

That's Jesus' story. The greatest story ever told. Except, if you go further in the story...follow it all the way to today, for instance, the incredible thing is...It's not done.

Because what happens is that Jesus' story intersects with my story. And that's where I just have to sit still in the moment and let it make me breathless.

See I know who I am without Him. Paralyzed by my proclivity for emotional dominance. Exhausted by a perfectionistic workaholism. Driven by a need to be noticed and approved of. Poisoned by the wicked clutch of bitterness and revenge that seems perfectly justifiable to my bruised and betrayed psyche. There is no living in all of that. There is no power in all of that.

But because Jesus did it first, I can do it now. Because He was willing to offer it all and able conquer it all, I can offer my all back to Him, and receive "everything I need for life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3). My emotional life, my work, my ego and my need for justice, it's all His when I collide with a risen Jesus. My heart, my mission, my sense of self, it's all empowered by a power so blinding it flashes across 2000 years of history to meet me where I am, here, right now, where my own story plays out.

I know who I am without Him, and I shouldn't be able to live like I do. I shouldn't be able to shoulder the weight of it, bear the sorrow of it, think through the confusion of it. I shouldn't be able to conquer my own inner junk to be of any earthly good whatsoever. I shouldn't be able to even entertain the thought of forgiving the unspeakable betrayals. Really, there should be no joy.

But there is and I can and I do, imperfectly for sure, stumbling as much as striding, learning and re-learning as I go. But I am breathless in this moment of rescurrection intersection, realizing again, just this morning, what a gift His God-empowered, death-can't-hold-me-back life is to me.

And what that means is that I woke up this morning......astonishingly alive.