Who is the Lamb?

As I was putting away my nativity today, wrapping each ceramic shepherd and angel in tissue paper, the last remaining items were baby Jesus and a lamb.  I wasn't really paying attention to my work since I was listening to some music while working and was caught up in the moment of the music.  But when I saw the baby and the lamb, my hands stopped working and I looked at the two fragile figurines sitting together in the empty stable.

The lamb and the baby that became the lamb.

One creature who was completely oblivious to the weight of the world's sins, and one Being who would carry the weight of the world's sins.

For the longest time I thought that the sacrificial lamb represented Jesus.  But I had a difficult time with that picture because in all the stories of the shepherd and the lambs, the lambs are the ignorant ones.  They are the ones always getting lost and completely unaware of the dangers that they step into.

I suppose it's because the Bible tells us that a "spotless" lamb had to be offered for the sacrifice and so we figure that must be like Jesus.  But there is nothing spotless in this world.  Everything has been touched by the hand of sin. Finding a spotless lamb would not even be possible. I'm guessing the priests found the most perfect lamb that they could. And that would just have to do.  But in all reality, there was nothing perfect.

How could Jesus represent a dumb animal?

Well...He can't.

So every time they made a sacrifice to God for their sins, they did their best to offer up the most innocent thing they could find.  But in spite of all their efforts, their sins were not washed away.  Instead, the stains of the blood, from the sacrifice, only deepened as they added one sacrifice after another to that cold, stone alter.  Because there is nothing we can do, no "perfect" offering we can offer, no sinless act we can sacrifice, that would wipe the slate clean.

And that's when Jesus came down, picked up the not-quite-perfect lamb with his gentle hands, and laid Himself down on that alter and said, "Sacrifice me instead."  And so we did.  We raised the knife with our own hands of sin and brought it down into the heart of perfection and spotless beauty.

The Bible says that we are all part of a holy priesthood.  The priest's job was to kill the lamb for the sake of our sins and we - each of us - have done that.  When we accept our imperfect nature, when we acknowledge that we are ignorant and foolish and prone to getting lost, when we recognize that we're no different than a stupid animal, we place that on the alter.  And then Jesus steps up, removes our sinfulness and takes our place.

But He can't do that unless we give it up to Him.  We need to recognize who we really are and who He really is.  We are that lamb, nuzzling beside him in the stable, completely unaware of our impending fate, until He stands up and takes our place.

The lamb is dumb.  One of the dumbest farm animals, actually.  And yet, every time we look at the lamb in the context of the Spirit, we see the Son of God.

When Jesus became a human, He did not reduce Himself and give up His status in Heaven.  He elevated us.

There is this overwhelming urge inside my spirit to bow down and worship Him when I try to wrap my head around this insanity.  How can Someone love me this much?  I can't even comprehend that kind of love.

When I ponder these things, how can I continue to doubt that my life is in His hands?  And yet I do.  Almost every day.  I doubt and I fear and I wonder if He's near.

There are so many stories and references in the Bible to Jesus as the Shepherd. How could I have missed it?  I am that lamb.  And He is my Shepherd.  And there is nothing He won't do to protect me.  He would even lay down His own life for mine.

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want...

life blood

Warning: 

This blog contains descriptions of blood.  

Do not read if you are squeamish or disturbed about this kind of thing.

When God commanded the Israelites to start making sacrifices, He did it so that it would be a constant reminder that, "without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins."  (Hebrews 9:22).  The slaughter of the innocent lamb was to be a foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice.

We are fortunate to live during this period of history when we no longer have to kill innocent animals since Jesus already paid the ultimate sacrifice. We don't need to watch the blood run out of an animal, and onto the ground, to truly grasp Christ's love for us.

Yet, today, my mind was drawn to Christ's sacrifice more vividly than it has ever been. 

The kids and I decided that we would raise our own Thanksgiving turkey this year, in a happy, healthy environment, fed only natural, antibiotic-free food and then processed in a humane and careful manner.

Our turkey had a good life, plenty of room to roam and was very docile and sweet.  But then came the time of the end...

I administered the fatal blow and watched with a gut-wrenching sadness how the blood drained from it's body.  Having never done such a thing before, I could hardly watch.  The other mother that was with me stood outside the coop and whispered, "The blood that was shed for you..."

I turned back and looked at the bird again and the old system of sacrifices suddenly came alive.  Priests had to do this kind of work daily!  And it was not a clean task.  There was so much blood.  It poured down the sides of the alter and puddled at the bottom.

I suppose that people would get somewhat desensitized after so many sacrifices. But the horror and the stench of death just had to leave at least some kind of impact on the people, especially on the priests.

I always thought that the priests were like the royalty of the group, with their fancy robes, and their important jobs and getting paid by the people.  But if you've never killed an animal, let me just educate you on something: it's a nasty job that leaves it's mark.  The odor of the animal stays on your hands and in your nose for hours.  The blood-splattered clothes need to be removed and washed carefully and the workspace needs to be rinsed down and disinfected very diligently.  So I guess the priests were not the "elite" of the Israelite group. They were the grunt workers. 

Peter tells us that we are a royal priesthood too.  And that we're especially chosen for this task.  (1 Peter 2:9).  We're the ones that have to do the dirty work, apparently.  We're the ones that have a first-hand look at the consequences of sin because ours are the hands that are stained with innocent blood.  Having the knowledge of the significance of Christ's sacrifice opens our eyes to the ugly truth of sin.

I think too often we gloss over the reality of the sacrifice and we look at pictures of Jesus on the cross with one or two streams of blood painted delicately along his hands or feet.  We don't want to frighten people with the reality because it might be too traumatic so we smooth over the ugliness.  Many pictures are just a silhouette of Jesus on the cross and some have absolutely no blood on them at all.  But it is His blood that saves us and I don't think He wants to keep that on the down-low.  Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

If we were to witness His sacrifice, with open eyes, we might be doubled over in disgust and ready to throw up.  I stood there, ready to fall apart and start crying as the turkey quickly stopped struggling and submitted to the unsympathetic hands of death.  His body was still warm, yet there was no fight left in him.  How much more devastating would it have been for me to see the life fade away from the only One that had never done anything but good?  To witness the lifeless hands of the One who reached for and tenderly picked up the fallen?  To see the blood dripping from the lips of the One who spoke only of His love for us?  What would I have felt if I saw His heart physically stop beating?  Would I have fainted?  Gotten sick?  Broken down in utter agony?

Can you take a moment to recognize the gruesome reality that Jesus suffered?  Of all the time periods in which He could have come to earth, He chose to arrive during a time when criminals were killed in the most inhumane ways possible.  Wouldn't it have been easier for him to come during the modern times with our silent injection killing?  Or He could have been hung?  Even a firing squad or a guillotine would have resulted in a faster death.  But that's not what He chose to do.  He showed up when He could be raised up on a hill and His blood could flow out of His body until it puddled to the ground and the dirt soaked it up.  For hours.  Nothing quick and relatively painless, like for my turkey.

I had the choice to slice the turkey's throat and let it bleed while it was still alive and the heart was still pumping.  Apparently, the blood drains faster and more thoroughly that way.  But I didn't have the heart to do that.  So I opted for the death blow and the slower draining process.

But that's not Jesus' way.  He chose the slowest, most painful way to die.  The method that would result in the most blood.

Why?  Because He was trying to drive a point home.  I think He was trying to make it real for us so that we wouldn't forget and then fall for the enemy's lies.

When I was 17, I suffered a skiing accident that resulted in a large crack in the back of my head. That morning, when my friend was trying to french-braid my hair, I had been talking to another friend on my right and my french-braid ended up lopsided.  The ski hit my head directly under the lopsided french braid.  The extra hair dampened the blow as did the strap from my ski goggles.  My white goggles were forever stained with blood after that accident.  Even though most people thought it was kind of gross, I kept using those goggles because every time I looked at the blood stain, I remembered how God protected me from something that could have been so much worse.
 
Today, after killing my innocent, docile turkey, my memory is stained with blood and every time I remember this experience, I can remember how Jesus protected me from something that could have been eternally worse by standing in between me and the blow that I deserved.

the greener grass

My little artist struck again today when she brought a handful of grass into the house.  (Read the ratty shoe post to see her other "this-is-beautiful" perspective.)

I was on the phone with the internet company when she came inside, excitedly, showing me her handful of grass, pulled up by the roots.  I was like, "Whoa!  Why are you bringing lawn grass into my living room?" The internet lady on the other end of the phone started laughing.  My little one, unhindered by my distress, held the exceptionally long grass carefully in her hands, tenderly stroking the long blades.  "Look how beautiful it is!  We need to put it in a vase!"

I was distracted since I was still on the service call with the Internet company and just kind of shooed her away with, "Maci, please take that grass back outside." She walked away and I continued my phone call.

After I ended my call, I went back to the kitchen to finish canning pears and I saw a drinking glass filled with water and stuffed full of the embarrassingly long backyard grass.  I just had to laugh.  I called Maci downstairs, held up the jar, smiled at her and asked her, "What do you see when you look at this?"

"I see a beautiful decoration!"  She exclaimed, accentuating the word beautiful.  She smiled and gently stroked the blades of grass again. "I put it in the water so that it could keep growing.  And it will get SO big and I can use it as a decoration in my room!"

I left the grass in the glass.  It's sitting on my counter as another reminder.  'Cause check this out:  When I'd go out to the backyard to tend to the chickens, I would see how long my grass was and I would feel overwhelmed because I'm having a bit of a hard time keeping up with the amount of housework I have right now.  I am embarrassed that my backyard grass is so long that I could weave a basket out of it or braid it into a climbing rope or something.  The length of the grass is a constant reminder to me that I am falling behind and makes me feel a bit like a failure.  But to the honest eyes of an innocent girl, the length of the grass is just, plain beautiful.

Her perspectives have not been tainted by the stresses and responsibilities of life.  For her, beauty is still beauty.  I do recall the Bible telling us to become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of God.  (Matthew 18:2).  There are so many lessons we can learn from the perspective of children.  That one verse in Matthew is so loaded!  So today, I am reminded to admire the beauty that God affords me even amidst the consequences of my own neglect.

Now I'm not saying that neglecting my yard tasks is a good thing, obviously.  But I love how no matter how much I accomplish or how much I fail to accomplish, my God is always there, sprinkling little reminders of His love in my path.  And when I stop to look at it, my daughter is right, that grass is really beautiful!

I would love to someday have the eyes of a child that sees the hand of God in everything around me.

night sky

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers 

-- the moon and the stars you set in place -- 

what are mere mortals that you should think about them, 

human beings that you should care for them?  

Yet you made them only a little lower than God 

and crowned them with glory and honor.  

Ps. 8:3-5

Every time we visit my parent's 18-acre property, my son begs to watch the stars at night.  He has always been drawn to the whole astronomy thing.  He loves the stars because, "They're so bright and so pretty and so shiny and there's so many!"

We don't get to watch them often because the night sky is usually past the kids' bedtimes.  But I promised we'd do it tonight.  So around 10:00, we bundled up, laid down our blankets, and cuddled under another blanket to watch the stars for almost an hour.

We laid there in the dark, listening to frogs and crickets and my son, who would remark, "Oh wow!"  And then a moment later, "Oh wow!"  I asked what he was seeing and he said his eyes were adjusting to the dark and it made it seem like more and more stars were appearing.  We would yell, "Did you just see that?" every time a "shooting star" would streak across the sky.  And we would watch the satellites travel across the expanse of the sky until they melted into the horizon.

Time just seemed to stand still as we sat, fixated on big exploding balls of gas.  How could something, relatively stationary, keep our attention for such a long time?  It's almost like we're in some sort of vacuum, where we realize our finiteness and we're subdued by it.

I looked at all those stars and told my kids how scientists believe that those stars have been in the sky for much, much longer than our earth has even existed.  That would mean that God provided those explosions of light maybe millions of years before He created our earth.  Like He knew that He would create us and so He planned really far ahead.  We reflected on that for a minute then my son said, "I don't understand how God was created or how forever can be forever.  Sometimes I get mad because I don't understand it."

I told him I understand his frustration since I also struggled with those same thoughts when I was younger.  But now, since I've experienced a relationship with Jesus, I don't care that there's so much that I don't understand.  Because I trust that understanding whatever "forever" means doesn't matter nearly as much as my promise to stand in the presence of Jesus someday.

The thing is that once I've given God authority over my life, that means I have relinquished control over everything that doesn't belong to me.  And understanding infinite concepts with my little brain is not something that belongs to me.  I'm free of that and free to allow God to guide my steps.  And that's such a peaceful place to be!

So rather than expend my energies to try to make sense of things that belong to God, I would just rather reflect on things like: the same God who created the vast universe also delicately fashioned our human bodies.  Our bodies are so intricately designed, so thoughtfully planned out, so lovingly formed.  How amazing is He?  His attention to detail for our mortal bodies -- that will someday, soon, turn to dust -- is nothing short than an expression of His ridiculously crazy love for us.  There seems to be more detail in the creation of our bodies than in the stars that literally outshine us.  Since before the dawn of our earth, those stars shone.  Long after our earth will cease to exist, those stars will likely still shine.  And yet, they are not the crown of His creation.  We are.  The ones who are made of dust and turn to dust.

What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?  Ps. 8:4

I know that a lot of people focus on our insignificance when they observe the immense expanse of the universe.  But the message I got tonight was that God loves us more than all those pretty stars and planets and galaxies.  I can't even wrap my head around such devotion from Creator God for something so puny as us.  This kind of reflection draws my heart into greater worship for Him.  But it also puts humans in perspective for me.  It seems like if God loves us this much, then I can certainly make a greater effort to love all of His children as well.

the broken shoe

At first glance, you might think this is a perfectly lovely display of decor and treasures in my daughter's room.  But did you notice the shoe on the bottom right side of the shelves?  My contribution to that shelf was the picture of her and her brother and the sunshine plaque.  The rest are her favorite things.

That silver shoe used to be part of a pair, of course.  Two silver, sparkly shoes that had a beautiful satin bow across the toes.  They were her favorite shoes and she would wear them nearly every day, rain or shine.  But like all shoes, they wore out.  The sparkly fabric started to fray and the bottom of the shoe was coming off of the top of it.  We tried gluing it but it was really starting to come undone.  She insisted on wearing them until they were literally falling off her feet.

We went to the store to get her new sparkly shoes.  They weren't nearly as beautiful as the current ones, no satin bow, no shiny fabric.  I headed to the garbage to deposit the old shoes when Maci snatched the better one of the pair from my hands and cried, "No!  I want to keep this one!"  "But we already bought you new shoes," I insisted.  "These are garbage now."  But she persisted.  She said that she wanted to keep it and put it on her shelf at home because it was a beautiful shoe.  I pointed out how the fabric was worn and how the lip was coming off.  She didn't care.  She said it was beautiful and since she couldn't wear them anymore, she wanted to be able to still enjoy them.  I relented and we took the shoe home.

It has been sitting on that shelf for well over a month now.  If you know me, you know that I'm quite particular about my home decor and keeping a ratty shoe on display is not exactly my style.  But there was a beautiful message in this piece of decoration that I wanted to treasure.

My daughter is the type of free-spirited girl that sees the images in the negative spaces.  She sees what isn't seen by most, and although she's not a huge fan of history and academics, she loves biographical story books about people who pushed against the norm and accomplished great things.  Books about Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Rosa Park, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr. etc.  I keep telling her that her perspectives on life will change the world someday.  They're already changing mine.

The idea that the old shoe still maintains its beauty is nothing short of God's perspective and it's a point of view that more of us need to adopt.  Everything that God created was beautiful and it was good.  We are all created in His image and we are beautiful and good.  But life takes its toll on us and we get worn down and worn out.  And sometimes, others may have trouble seeing our value.  But if you look carefully, past the effects of time and age, you can see what they were meant to be and what they still are.

I know this is a cheesy sort of message to write about, but as I was putting away some laundry in her room this morning, I saw the little shoe again and realized how unfair I have been to some of God's creation.  Some of His people have lost some of their glitter in my eyes.  And I can definitely see the negative effects that this life has had on them.  And to be quite honest, I don't keep those people in my life.  Because you can't keep wearing a broken shoe without it taking a toll on your foot, you know what I'm saying?

But what if, rather than tossing them into no-man's-land, I set them aside to remember them as God intended?  Wow...seriously, that's kind of profound right now.

Think about it.  There are people who have done some serious damage in my life and I have had to take a step away from them because if I had stayed, I would be more damaged, myself.  I did what I needed to do to function properly.  But in the process of removing their damaging effects from my life, I also removed all the good memories.  I thought it would be easier that way.  And it is easier.  For me.  But what about my God?  How does it affect and grieve Him when I dismiss one of His children as "garbage" when He gave His own precious life for them?

He is desperate to show us how much He treasures us and we, as His representatives, sometimes do a poor job of perpetuating that love to all of His children.  What would happen, if we loved even those that we could no longer maintain in our lives?  What kind of world would it be?

I pray that God grants me the vision to see beyond the scratches and the worn-out edges and see the souls of the ones for which He died.