Good Holy Week to you who follow the Western church calendar, and good Lent to you Orthodox friends who are at the beginning of this blessed season of repentance. I have been particularly grateful this year for the wisdom of the Church in establishing this rhythm of preparation and celebration.  I surely need encouragement to make the sustained and deliberate effort by which we "work out our salvation with fear and trembling."  And I rejoice with all the saints to see that truly it is God who is at work in each of us, to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil 2:12-13)!  As we engage in the particular moral effort of Lent, He is faithful to ready our hearts to follow Christ through His death and resurrection.

 

I had an experience this weekend that brought the reality of the Cross and the empty tomb to the foreground.  My husband and I spent more time in the city than we usually do, celebrating the opening of a light-rail station he helped build, and attending a Seattle Sounders FC (soccer) match thanks to tickets from a generous co-worker.  Sometimes being downtown can feel heavy or discouraging, but on this day I had quite the opposite experience.  I found myself continually perceiving goodness in the great variety of people going about their errands and entertainments. Each person I noticed touched my heart a little, and the warmer my heart grew, the more goodness I saw.  Ordinary things, like the bouncy walk of a preschooler on the sidewalk in front of me and the care of a man for his dog, moved me.  I delighted over the much-in-love couple in the row in front of us, and felt the joy of the most devoted soccer fans behind the goal who chanted and sang with endless energy throughout the game.  All this goodness and vitality I was seeing slowly formed itself into an intuition of absolute reality:  "The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord (Psalm 33:5)."  It really is full and brimming over with His goodness, His riches, His glory (see Psalm 119:64, Isaiah 6:3, Psalm 104:24), and everywhere I looked I was seeing it.  Even in a city like Seattle, which I'm afraid is charging right over the cliff of every permissiveness fallen humans can conceive, the earth is full of His goodness. 

 

How can it be?  How is the true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable so palpably present amidst so much sin and brokenness?  We know the secret:  Christ, who made peace through the blood of His cross, is reconciling all things to Himself (Colossians 1)!  It isn't just because "life is good," as the t-shirt declares.   It is because God offered up His only Son for the redemption of His people and the restoration of all creation.  Because of the death and resurrection of Christ, the waters of the flood have become waters of baptism.  Goodness is alive and well because the Cross stands at the center of the story of the world, and looms large over every city, every household, every man, woman and child.  Because of God's victory over death and destruction, every soul may see the goodness of the Lord here in the land of the living.  And whether awake or asleep, grateful or hateful, every soul must confront and respond to the Cross of Christ.

 

Leaving the soccer match, I walked behind a woman with a cross tattooed at the base of her neck.  I found myself wondering, does she know what this sign means?  Does she know the Cross?  And I realized how alike she and I are, for I wonder the same thing about myself.  This Lenten season has brought me to my knees with the conviction of how easily I take my eyes off of Christ, how readily I ignore and evade His Cross, how little I live as one resurrected in Him.  In this newsletter I invite us to take time to let the Cross sink deeper than our skin.  Let us speak to our souls, Another lives in me, and He is the crucified and risen King.  First you will find a poignant piece from Leanne's archives about the depth of sin that will aid us in receiving all that Christ's death has won for us.  I am also sharing some devotional writing that I pray will bless you in practicing His Presence through deeper meditation on the Cross. 

 

Thank you for your notes and letters, sharing the ways you see the goodness of the Lord in your lives and assuring us of your prayers for our team and this ministry.  Know that we are sincerely grateful and very much need your prayers every day.  Thank you too for your tithes and offerings that enable us to reach out with the gospel of Jesus Christ all around the world.  As Leanne would always say, this is an incredible time to be in this exciting ministry, and we abound in thanksgiving.  Thank you for standing shoulder to shoulder with us as together we lift high the Cross. 

 

Yours in Christ,