It is Easter. There are no eggs, no bunnies, no jelly beans. There are no fancy hats or Easter Sunday pastels. We are not breaking out our white clothes like the season back home allows, because let’s be honest, by month eight on the World Race you no longer own anything white. There is no after service brunch in the fellowship hall. No dimmed lights and amplified speakers or fancy slide show depicting pictures of Jesus’s death to yank at your heart. There is not even family, at least not in the traditional sense.
Instead, I am in South Africa. I am sitting on a balcony at a hostel listening to colorful birds and monkeys chatter. I am surrounded by 54 friends; the family of God. We sit on couches, stools and all around each other’s feet, which are still semi dirty from our past month living in tents in the Malawian dirt. It is Easter on the World Race, probably the most unique Easter I will ever have.
Our two guitarists play and we sing to our Savior, “You make beautiful things out of the dust, you make beautiful things out of us.” My eyes are closed and my voice is shaky as I sing, “You make me new, you are making me new…” I am weeping. He is breaking me.
Jesus is so near to me and he is revealing to me what he has done for me.
I can see his feet. Bare and strong. Walking on a trail of red rose petals. The golden hem of his robe stir them gently as he walks and they tumble in his wake. After he passes, the petals still and then I see another set of feet; a woman’s, tanned by the sun. Her steps are both delicate and strong. The hem of a beautiful white gown pools at her feet, catching pedals like butterflies in a net as she glides past. The bride.
He awaits her at the end of the aisle. She is nervous but confident. Her hands tighten around the gown she is holding up so she can take those last few steps.
Then they are face to face and she cannot believe the look in his eyes. Without words, everything about him radiates to her, “You are beautiful.”
And for the first time ever, no part of her doubts it. He is truth and she is beauty.
He takes her to an open place, and they dance. He twirls her, the tiny pearls on her dress sparkle as she spins. She is like a little girl, free to twirl and spin and dance.
And dance she does. In her bare feet, picking up her gown and sloshing the fabric to the left and right.
She is radiant, glorious. She can tell by the look on his face. He is enamored, captured. And as he takes the crown off of his head and places it on hers she knows, she is beautiful.
Then Jesus said to me;
“You have ravished my heart,
My sister, My Bride.
You have ravished my heart,
With one look in your eye.” (Song of Solomon 4:9)
I am broken. All of my life I have felt so dirty and unworthy of anything good. I have worn clothes of shame. I have kept my eyes low and my heart hidden, afraid that someone would see the guilt concealed within.
For years I have prayed that the Lord would give me a revelation of his death. That I would really understand what he went through. Skin being torn, being spit at and cursed, climbing the hill, bearing the weight, dying. For me. I don’t know if I really ever understood it all. I mean, I should live in reverence of the offering he made and live worthy of that, but sometimes it all just felt like a story. Facts, and not a real life person, a man, dying a real death.
But today he revealed to me not what it was like to endure. the piercing truth of how it unfolded. But rather he chose to reveal to me the why… Why he took the lashes. Why he let them abuse and bloody him. Why a King would leave his throne and put on a crown of thorns and endure the hardest most painful death imaginable.
His answer to me was simple; to make me beautiful.
He took me from the mud. He washed of the caked on dirt from my skin until it shone and combed the knots from my hair. He removed my garments of shame and dressed me in a beautiful white gown fit for a queen and he placed a crown upon my head.
He did it to prepare me for my wedding. He did it to betroth me to him forever. So my feet would be bare and free to dance before him, no chains. He did it because he loves me. And love is worth fighting for. Dying for.
He did it because he could no longer let me live under the affliction of lies and shame.
He did it because he loves just looking at me in my wedding dress. Because he delights in me. Because he loves the way my bare feet do a happy little Irish jig and slap the floor.
He has made me pure. Made me new. Made me beautiful.
Beloved,
We are the Bride. We are radiant. We are glorious. He died to wash us clean. Yet we live under lies that say we have to earn it, be good enough, wash ourselves. We hide under our rags.
“It is finished.”
Love has won. And we are covered in it. Adorned with it. Dripping; it pools at our feet.
Let him wash you and dress you (And men, if you are reading this, I don’t even care if that makes you uncomfortable. Jesus would still look you full in the face and call you his beloved and tell you that you are radiant and beautiful; His. Deal with it and believe it).
Let him lead you out on the dance floor as the pedals dance around you and he twirls you. Let him look you in the eyes and tell you how beautiful you are.
This is love. This is truth. This is intimacy. And this is what you were made for.
Happy Easter
