Easter | Elaine Olsen

In the Olive Press with Jesus {part one}

February 19, 2012

My heart is greatly troubled, stirred up and unsettled. Only God can untangle this one. Only God can bring order to confusion. Only God can make sense out of chaos. Only God can take what man has meant for evil and make it count for his eternal good.

Only God.

How well I remember a season ago when a good friend wrote these comforting, yet challenging words to me: “Elaine, there are some places where only you and God can go to together.” As much as I dreaded her forecast of seeming isolation, I knew that she was right. There simply are some places, some times, some pilgrimages in my life that belong to just God and me. Times when I must set aside what others think in order to take hold of what God thinks.

This is one of those times. Fitting that it should coincide with my Easter walk. As the season of Lent enters in, so does my need to make pilgrimage with Jesus to a garden and to a wrestling that I am certain will culminate with nothing else but a clear and strong understanding of how this cross must be carried.

Lent. My season of personal subtraction.

Lent. God’s season of eternal multiplication.

Lent. The path that leads me forward in search of a fresh revelation of the risen Lord.

Lent. The path that leads God downward in search of a child willing to receive the truth.

And somewhere in the middle, we’ll meet. Me going to God. Him coming to me. A place on the map where only He and I can go to together. A time for seeing God in a way I’ve never seen him before.

Personal subtraction. Eternal multiplication. A certain formula for God turning things around.

Are you ready for Lent, friends? Better still, are you willing? God has something to show each one of us, something that can only be revealed in the hushed tones and isolated prayers of Gethsemane. I cannot forego my time with Jesus in the garden this year. I’ve so much to let go of; so much to take hold of. The Olive Press is where I need to be.

If you’d like to join me on this journey to the cross, then I invite you to stop by each Wednesday for a Lenten pause. We’ll be joined by my father, Chuck Killian, who’ll give us a word or two to chew on as we move forward to Calvary. A few thoughts from my father about the Father. I can’t think of a better guide to guide us to Jesus. Until then…

Peace for the journey,
elaine

nighttime desperations…

April 22, 2011

Nighttime desperations…

Inclinations of the mind, heart, and soul that bend in the opposite direction of God’s peace as darkness begins its descent upon a day’s worth of doing. Hidden agendas that bury beneath the brilliancy of the sun’s witness but that overtly and willingly take the stage to blanket the landscape of the moon’s illumination.

Fretfulness. Tearfulness. Anxiousness. Tensions. Confusions. Consumptions. Considerations. Manipulations.

When was the last time your “tucking in time” gave way to nighttime desperations? Why do they seem to wait until the cover of darkness to speak their witness? What is it about a night’s pause that offers up fertile soil for our desperations to take root and breathe and flourish into a stress far grander than the daytime will allow?

Why did mother always say, “Things will look better in the morning.”?

I’m not sure she knew the reasons behind her proclamation. I think, perhaps, she spoke from experience. I think we all could… speak from experience. Many of us could testify to the difference between a night’s wrestling and a morning’s peace. Some of us closed our yesterdays with full-grown and on display desperations. Most of us probably woke up to our todays with a lesser portion of struggle, less angst, less confusion, and more tempered understanding. The dawning of a new day has brought better perspective, not always perfect answers and certain peace, but better perspective.

A perspective not so cluttered by the night’s quiet and cover of darkness, but instead, a perception bathed in the radiancy of the morning’s crescendo.

There’s a holiness that surrounds the birthing of new day… a sacred mention of the Creator that cannot be overlooked or shrouded by our desperations. The light is too bright to miss; too big to hide; too loud to silence. It will not be trumped by the dark deliberations of a night’s pause. Certainly, we can pull the covers over our heads, keep the lights off, and close the blinds to the announcing of a new day, but doing so won’t change the fact that the light has come to lay hold of the night.

And with the light, comes life… another day to flesh out sacred understanding beneath the watchful gaze and warmth of a sun’s embrace.

A Son’s embrace.

Not long ago, there were a few disciples who understood the length and breadth, width and depth of a nighttime desperation. The silence and cover of darkness held their hope captive and threatened to claim previously held truth. Their “tucking in time” gave way to fretfulness; tearfulness; anxiousness; tensions; confusions; consumptions; considerations; manipulations. Their night perspective was too shallow to contain the possibility of the morning’s promised light. Instead, they gathered their fears, collected their tears, and hovered beneath darkened perspective, certain that the night was too long in its witness. Long forgotten were a Father’s words about things looking better in the morning. Their night stood in stark contrast to his previously spoken truth.

But as with all nights, regardless of their desperations, morning broke through. Light came, and the Son rose to take his rightful place above their cluttered considerations and painful conclusions. Christ shattered the darkness with the witness of his illuminated presence, and heaven’s morning crescendo has never birthed more brilliantly.

An Easter morning to replace all nighttime desperations. A once-and-for-all reasoning to bridge understanding regarding the difference between a night’s wrestling and a morning’s peace.

How thankful I am for that morning. How thankful I am for this one… these early, beginning hours that breathe easier than the closing ones I experienced last evening. With the sunrise, the Son has risen to his rightful place in my mind, heart, and soul, and things are, indeed, looking better. How I pray to live in that better throughout my day and into the night hours. Resurrection living is intended for them both. Thus, I pray…

May the light and witness of Calvary’s crescendo illuminate our days and penetrate our nights with the truth of your Son’s embrace, Father. Fill our desperations with the promise of morning’s arrival. You are the candle that keeps company with our days and nights. You are the flame that blazes the path before us, marking our way home to you. Even so, come Lord Jesus and light your fire in our hearts this day as we pilgrim to the Easter cross and fall beneath the weightiness of your truth and grace. And grant us your peace… always Peace for the journey ahead. Amen.

~elaine

the ugly, beautiful truth…

April 5, 2010

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” (Matthew 27:62-64)

I gave my daughter a gift this Easter. While other kids were unwrapping chocolate bunnies and cramming marshmallow peeps into their mouths, my daughter was chewing on something different. Something that didn’t swallow as easily as chocolate or taste nearly as agreeable. This Easter I gave my daughter a taste of the “ugly, beautiful truth”—as the Pharisees and chief priests would describe it some 2000 years ago in Matthew’s gospel, the “last deception.”

Let me explain.

My laptop computer usually runs throughout the day and on display at the dining room table (alas, my kingdom for an office to call my own!). My blog’s “home page” sometimes serves as the screen saver, displaying the most recent post I’ve written. This past Friday was no exception. Curious child #4 (aka “Miss Amelia”) was interested in the previous writing “the exactly-why-we-need-Easter post”, especially the youtube video that includes scenes from The Passion of the Christ. You know where this is headed, don’t you?

Her curiosity led to a mouse click and then to her partial viewing of some of the graphic depiction of Christ’s crucifixion. Her sobbing and her “Make it stop!” was indication to me (currently in another location in the house) that something was terribly wrong. As I entered the dining room, I understood the reason behind that wrong—

the ugly, beautiful truth that was playing itself out on the fifteen-inch screen in front of her.

I stopped the video, cradled my daughter in my arms, and prayed for the right words to tell her. I suppose some parents would immediately try and soothe the ache by changing the subject, diverting attention elsewhere, or by shoving more promises of peeps and chocolate into the hands of their children so as to bring a measure of peace into the chaos. That’s not the way I roll, friends. Instead of trying to brush the truth under the rug, it’s always been my inclination to deal with the truth, however and whenever it comes. I’ve not always done it picture perfectly, but I’ve never found there to be much profit in pretending that truth doesn’t exist or that truth’s cause is better served by pushing it aside for another day.

Today is always a good day for truth whether it’s ugly or beautiful or a combination of both. Such was the case on this occasion. Thus, we spent some time together exploring my daughter’s questions, her tears, and her pain. Then we talked about Christ’s questions, his tears, and his pain. And when she asked me about the level of physical pain that Jesus felt and how she wished he didn’t have to “do it,” I told her the truth… the ugly, beautiful truth. Something along the lines of…

Yes, baby, they hurt Jesus badly. But more than the blood, more than the whips and the thorns or the crown that tore into his flesh, Jesus’ pain came from the fact that, in those moments, he was completely separated from his Father. And separation from the Father is far worse than any pain we will ever experience in our flesh. You see, Jesus had been with God since, well, forever. Never had they been apart. Even when Jesus came to us as a baby in Bethlehem, even then he had his Father’s eyes and attention. But on that day of the cross, Jesus was all alone, for in his flesh and on his body he carried the fullness of an entire world’s sin… past, present, and future. On that day, his Father looked away; Jesus knew it and that was far worse for him than the pain he was experiencing in his flesh. He did it for all of us, baby. For you and for me, for all of the sinners in this world. If he hadn’t, then we wouldn’t have a way to get home to God.

“I want to get home to God, mommy. I want everyone to get home to God.”

Then you, my daughter, must take your place in the story. Christ’s painful walk to the cross now belongs to you. You’ve been charged with the telling, even as I have been. You can no longer step away from the ugly, beautiful truth of the cross because truth has now been revealed to you, and you will spend the rest of your life working it out, asking some hard questions, and living the story that has now become a part of your reality, your history… past, present, and future.

“Yes, mommy, I think I understand.”

Yes, baby, I think that you do, and mommy will be praying for you as God begins to prepare your heart for the living out of his story.

***

The day after Jesus was crucified and subsequently laid in the tomb, fear was present amongst those who had the most to lose should Christ make good on his word and rise from the grave. While the disciples may have forgotten about Jesus’ promise of a third-day resurrection, the chief priests and the Pharisees had thought of little else since first hearing the proclamation. They were determined to make sure that nothing would further perpetuate the rumor—the lie—that Christ was, indeed, the promised Messiah. What they didn’t count on was the fact that the lie was, indeed, the truth. And truth, no matter how offensive it may seem at the time of its revealing, will not remain buried forever.

Truth tears off the grave clothes, shakes the foundation of the earth, and shatters the darkness with the marvelous light of God’s amazing grace and plan for his creation. Truth speaks louder than the silence that surrounds it, and truth cannot be contained within a tomb. Truth walks free from the tomb… back then, right now.

Perhaps the Pharisees were right when they said, “This last deception will be worse than the first.” Christ’s conquering of the grave has, indeed, escalated the exponential increase of the ugly, beautiful truth of God’s kingdom come. It swells and amplifies and enlarges with every passing encounter between his heart and ours. What began on Judean soil back “there and then” continues through to our “here and now.” To a little patch of eastern, North Carolina soil, where a little seven-year-old girl and an almost forty-four-year-old woman bow to receive some kingdom seed for a future harvest.

The ugly, beautiful truth of Easter.

The final, truth of the kingdom that is stronger now than it has ever been.

My ticket home; yours as well. Thus, I pray…

Reveal your truth, Father, to me, in me, and, subsequently, through me for the remaining days of my earthly pilgrimage. I don’t always understand you, Lord, but I know you and believe you, and therefore, harbor enough faith to carry me home to you. Take the seeds of this past week—the ugly, beautiful truth that has been revealed to me and to my precious daughter—and grow them into a kingdom harvest that exceeds our limited imagination. Strengthen our hearts for the “holding” and our lips for the “telling.” When we are tempted to trade in your truth for the lies of the enemy, secure our foundation with the fortification of the cross and the reality of your resurrection walk 2000 years ago. You’re still walking it, Lord. You walked it this passed week, straight into the dining room of my life, straight through to the heart of my daughter. Keep me faithful to the tending of the seeds that have been planted in all of my children; keep me mindful of what a privilege it is to water those seeds with the ugly, beautiful truth of your kingdom come. Amen.

peace for the journey,

PS: I’m likely to be MIA this week in blog land. Kids are on spring break; there’s a lot of fun to be had that I don’t want to miss. Love you all, and just in case I haven’t told you lately, thank you for spending some of your day with me. You are why I am here at my cyber address. Shalom.

the "exactly-why-we-need-Easter" post…

April 1, 2010

Would that I could escape the sin of this world.

I would, but I can’t. It surrounds me, invites me, terrorizes me, and reminds me of everything that is wrong about this world. Read about it in the headlines, see it on the television, hear it in the Wal-Mart, wherever we live and move and have our being, sin is the order of the day. A blatant and firm reminder of exactly why Jesus and his cross are needed, not just 2000 years ago, but today.

Today.

My heart is a tangled-up, jumbled-up mess this morning. I went to bed a mess; woke up a mess all because of a single headline that has, yet again, gripped my emotions with all the fury and fuss of hell’s intention. A seven-year-old girl has fallen prey to the sadistic schemes of the enemy, brought about through the hands of her step-sister and several young men intent on satisfying their sinful lusts via her innocence. I’ll spare you the details. They’re enough to turn your stomach, and if you’re stomach remains upright and unturned by them, then your heart has grown cold, calloused and unmoved by the sin-sick condition of this world.

This isn’t my happy Easter post; friends. Would that it could be. This is my exactly-why-we-need-Easter post. It would be nice if Easter dresses and egg hunts were the focal point of my heart this day, but they aren’t. Instead, I’m thinking about the unsanitized version of Easter—the one that’s ugly, repugnant to the senses, and that steps all over our need to keep Easter lovely and between the lines of our religious décor. As Christians, we are sometimes tempted to skip over the fuss and fury of Friday’s hell in order to arrive at Sunday’s conclusion.

I understand. I’m a Sunday-conclusion kind of gal. It’s how I like to live my faith, in victory and full of the conquering truth of the resurrection. But to arrive there without taking ample pause to reflect on what our Jesus went through in order to allow us sweet victory, is to keep sin’s ugliness separated from grace’s beauty. And that simply cannot be done. They come as a package deal, sin and grace, grace and sin. Without one, there is no need for the other. Life could simply live as it lives with no consequences, no rules, no guidelines except the one that says, “If it feels good, do it and let the chips fall where they may.” Apparently what felt good for at least seven men this past Sunday was a seven-year-old girl, and the chips? Well, they’ve fallen on tender soil—the broken soil of a young life—the consequences of which will be staggering in the end.

We don’t live in a world free from sin and the need for grace therein. As Christians, we sometimes forget our need for grace; the world has certainly forgotten its need for grace, but God has never been neglectful with his remembrance. He knows what we need, even as he knew it 2000 years ago, even as he planned for it pre-Eden on the front side of Genesis.

It’s hard for me to think about God and the “all-knowing” part of his nature—if he saw this past Sunday coming, even from the very beginning, then why did he allow it? Why make her pay for the sins of others? Why should she (the least of the least) harbor the fullness of carnality when she didn’t ask for it? Someone should have loved her better, watched over her better, made sure her “better” was of paramount importance. But “better” she didn’t receive, and now she is left to mourn what’s been lost.

I don’t have perfect answers for my questions, but I serve a perfect God, and by faith, I’m choosing to believe in those answers. I may not receive them on this side of eternity, but if I didn’t believe they’d one day be available to me, then I’d given up on faith a long time ago. Why? Because my almost forty-four years have afforded me plenty of occasions for questions and for the sacred mystery attached to their answers. There are simply some wrestlings of the heart that exceed my understanding at this point. Perhaps with spiritual maturity, I’ll grow in my understanding, but for now, all I can do is concede truth to Jesus and to look toward Sunday.

For Sunday is coming.

Soon.

Resurrection is upon us, closer now than it has ever been.

A Sunday conclusion that reads sinless, sanitized, saved by grace and grace alone.

Grace for all, even them—those seven, Lord—the exact reason why you could not skip over the hell of Friday to get to the hallelujah of Sunday. Oh the depths of where you’ve been for me, for them, for her, for the world. I cannot explain that kind of love and grace. I can only receive it, and in turn, Lord, out of that receiving… give it.

Even to them.

This is the conquering truth of Sunday’s conclusion.

Forgiveness.

Not as the world gives, Father, but as you give.

Even so, make my heart a conduit of yours.

So be it.

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Walking my Peace…

March 30, 2010

“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it, and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace…’” (Luke 19:41-42).

I had a bad dream last night. Not surprising considering the events that preceded my final surrender to slumber. I’d already had my good dose of going-to-sleep, Bible reading and was happily drifting away when I heard the slamming of car doors on my front lawn. I awakened Billy and asked him, “Did you hear that?” As if.

He hadn’t. I ran to the dining room window to discover two trucks on our front lawn. Because of some recent car break-ins in our neck of the woods, I was certain that the bandits were making their rounds to my beat-up van, chock full of remnants from a day’s work in the attic that were soon to find a new home at the Salvation Army. My husband commented it would be a blessing if the robbers would cart the stuff off thus, saving him a trip. After pulling on his britches, he headed outdoors to take a look around. Alas, no bandits, only EMT workers responding to a neighbor’s call across the street.

Once I was back in bed, my adrenaline was still pumping and my mind began to entreat all the possible scenarios of what “might have been.” It took a long time for me to resettle my thoughts and move back to the calm I had previously known, but eventually I drifted off to sleep.

To a bad dream.

I won’t go into the particulars, but safe-to-say, it involved a couple of missing children… my children. Seems ridiculous even typing that now; dreams always have a way of living bigger when they’re “in the moment” and happening upon the stage of the subconscious. At the time, the feelings I felt were very real and enough to arouse me from my slumber. Once fully awake, I went upstairs to check on my children and returned to my thinking… about how the earlier wanderings of my mind might have contributed to a bad dream. About how God tells me to bring all thoughts captive to him and to allow him to reframe them in accordance with his truth.

And when I did, when I began to hash this dream out with God, I remembered my previous going-to-sleep, Bible reading from Luke—Jesus’ words that said,

‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace…’

And then I remembered what would bring me peace.

Jesus.

And then I was incredibly thankful for this one truth that I, in fact, do know and do hold as my abiding truth in all my times and situations, both day and night.

Jesus Christ and the promise of his peace.

Jesus no longer weeps over my ignorance as he did on that day when he stood on the threshold of a painful surrender. He doesn’t look down from heaven today and shed a tear regarding my willful neglect of his truth. I imagine he still cries for others who’ve yet to make that leap of faith-filled understanding, but as for me and my faith, I’m securely anchored to Jesus and to the pilgrimage of Easter that we walk together this week. His story is my own. His life and death and resurrection belong to me, even as it belonged to those who stood by to watch it in living color 2000 years ago. The words he echoed through his tears back then are the words he echoes still… words he’s entrusted to me and to you for the telling.

We are God’s peace-ambassadors, his kingdom peace-keepers, peace-makers, peace-tellers. We are the living color, flesh-and-blood carriers of our Savior’s truth, and should we choose to remain silent, the rocks will rise up to take our place. God is just that good. His truth is just that pure. His life is just that real. His love is just that much. So good and pure and real and much that even the stones of creation cannot contain their voices regarding his authenticity.

I want to be found as faithful. I want to herald the truth of Easter, and I want the anchor of God’s peace sustaining me on all occasions, whether the moon or the sun is governing the light. Today, I know what brings me peace because long ago I “recognized the time of God’s coming to me”, and I received his story as my own. I live it again this week as I walk to Calvary to remember, to reflect, and to renew my heart as an Easter child with an Easter inheritance to share.

A very good dream. A very certain reality.

God’s Peace. God’s Son. God’s Gift. God’s Grace.

The Truth behind Easter.

Remember Christ well this week; live Christ all the more. I’ll meet you at the empty tomb. As always…

peace for the journey,
~elaine

PS: The winner of the pay-it-forward giveaway is Leah @ The Point. Congrats, Leah. Please send me your snail mail via my e-mail, and as soon as the book arrives in the mail to me, I’ll send it your way along with a few extras. Enjoy.

Category Archives: Easter