thoughts on an imperfect Easter

Easter weekend. Thinking about reading my Bible, which I left in the car and some point this week and have not brought into the house yet. Avoiding getting too close to Steve's face because he has had a fever since Wednesday night. He might be getting better today though. (I was trying to type "getting better" and I typed "gettering" instead. Getting + better = gettering!) Anyway, I miss getting close to his face. I am sure that if he did not feel so bad, he would enjoy the break, because I touch his face a little too often for him, but he has learned to bear it well. He comes from a family where they have this strange thing called "personal space." I'm not sure I entirely understand it.

We were going to have our own little Good Friday service last night, but for some reason we never got around to it. I feel that Easter weekend is a time to reflect. On the cross, on His mercy, on how to tell people about it. Not that I don't reflect on that every single day, at least a little bit. Gratefully, incredulously, happily. At some point, every day, I am over-awed by the mercy of God sending Jesus. But I have a notion that on Good Friday, Easter, and the Saturday in between, my reflecting should be specific. On purpose. And I feel that to sit and reflect purposefully, I have to have the whole house all clean, and nothing distracting me, except maybe a cup of tea, and I can't be in my pajamas. I can't be sitting on the couch, on a bed of sheets and blankets with my Eeyore and my pillow, eating muffins while the coffee table is covered with glasses and cups of tea and sprite from yesterday.

The Lord doesn't mind all that, I think, but since I do, I'd like to get up and do something about it. Instead, I rest, lazily on the couch, since I have a headache, and I fear (from much past experience) that, because I am tired and there is sickness around, any extra exertion, be it working out or just cleaning the kitchen, will land me in bed with a fever and antibiotics for the better part of two weeks. Not cleaning up, just wishing to. Not making my yummy menus, just thinking about them. Not reflecting on the cross, just thinking about reflecting.

I've slowly come to a realization–one not just for today, but any day when I let perfection (or the absence of it) dictate what I do–that the Lord puts us in our physical circumstances, on purpose, so we can learn, but I don't learn, I just use circumstance as an excuse sometimes. Now I think of Corrie ten Boom, in a gross, disgusting, really sad concentration camp, infinitely worse than my cozy, messy house, and how she could have thought, "Worship? Read the Bible? Not here, this isn't the place, this isn't the time." That sounds really silly, but when I think about it, that's what I do all the time.

Now, not to advocate leaving one's house or self an awful mess and only considering spiritual matters, because God gave us the physical world as well, and bodies and houses are important, and always will be. But He is more important, and those things only matter because of Him.