So I gave up coffee for what?: Post Lent Reflections

Web woven by Spider on Caffeine

So it's been nearly a week since Easter, and I may have consumed 2-5 coffees/caffeinated drinks each day since Easter Sunday.

I thought about maybe cutting down or trying to make my fast semi-permanent, but road trips make that difficult.

Tea and coffee is cheap and often free at hostels, and it goes down smooth, does the trick, especially when it's cold and damp, like in Scotland.

Glen Coe, The Highlands, Scotland, UK 

So other than the knowledge that I can indeed fast from caffeine, what did I gain? What did Easter hold for me?

Easter held some amazing music. While Christmas Carols tend to be the most loved songs, I just revel in the beautiful, rejuvenating music of Easter. The lyrics and melodies just feed me, and I've been singing harmonies arranged by Huw White all week. The harmonies to Tim Hughes "Sing Alleluia" stuck with me wandering the fields of Scotland. The lyrics of "In Christ Alone" followed me through the glens and lochs and bens...

Easter is a reminder that all is not what it seems... a reminder of the promise that all will be made new. In a world where things that came out last week are considered old, it's really easy to miss the heavenly perspective on earthly time. It's easy to be shallow and feel old cause I'm not 22 anymore, or feel frumpy because my clothes aren't brand new, or something like that. It's easy to look at my modest teaching career and feel unimportant, or to look at the accomplishments of those around me and feel empty...

But things aren't always what they seem. As I've said before, there are invisible things... spiritual things happening all the time. Spiritual beings making choices, taking action. There are spiritual acts, movements, motions in us and all around us, and we wittingly or no, take part in these actions. So does Jesus.

Jesus saw faith in followers the world rejected. Jesus' spirit couldn't be held by death in the tomb. He saw men and women and girls alive where we saw death. He saw health where others saw illness, disease and deformation.

Even in my humble teaching post, I pray and Jesus tells me not to leave... that I can't know what He's doing because I'm there... maybe I'll never know.

Even in this silly blog with my silly words. Words I get scared to write because someone may someday throw them back in my face. Words I want to edit because someone might read them. Words which aren't judged by the numbers of followers I have or blog views I get (tho those stats are interesting,...)... No, I need to write because when I  pray, God says to write... to write humbly and honestly and without apology. So I try... cause who knows where they will go or what invisible things they will inspire?

I'm reading The Secret Garden again... and Mary keeps wandering around trying to figure out if her garden is dead. But she tends it for a few weeks before she finally gets Ben Weatherstaff and Dickon to tell her it's alive. Weeks. I would like to think that if I came to a dead garden I would be so faithful, but after a few hours of pulling weeds, I'd probably give it up for dead and come back in a month to see if it worked, but no. Mary comes back everyday. She explores and finds out every detail and every nook.

She doesn't know the invisible things are there, and they are changing her... but her reward is great.

I hope that I can develop the faithfulness of Contrary Mary in The Secret Garden... that my work, however humble, would change me, so that when spring does come, there are beautiful flowers in my garden (wow that sounds SO cheesy, but I'm leaving it here). Not like treasure in heaven or anything, but the reward for her toil, the garden, was the reward for Mary... She didn't get huge houses or money or fame or anything out of her toil (not yet anyway),... she got the gorgeous flowers to enjoy.

I'm trying to give it up, but there's a part of me that wants to be right all the time, and I'm slowly learning that a lot of the time, there aren't completely right or wrong answers, but perspectives and emotions and ideas and invisible things that happen because of words and ideas and thoughts and how we think them and when and where get thrown out into the universe causing their own version of chaos.

I don't want to worry about how I stack up against other people, but what I can offer them and how I can love them better. Somehow, not drinking coffee has helped me learn this about myself... but how, I don't know... it's just one of those invisible things that got thrown out into the universe in my crazed caffeine craving fits, I suppose.