Scott brought up this e-mail I sent out to last years team and I thought it would make a timely addition to this years blog. I hope you enjoy the story and that it inspires everyone headed to Cambodia this year, and also the family and friends that support us, to always be receptive to the miracles God touches our lives with.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought, since this is Easter Week, that I would contribute a little real life story from a few years back. It happened one Easter morning when my kids were young and Easter to them was still about bunnies, colored eggs and candy. It was a small thing we witnessed as we got ready to head to church. I've mentioned this in passing to friends, on occasion, who have been duly impressed and quickly offered up the obligatory response of, "Wow, that's amazing." And it was, especially since it happened on the morning that we celebrate the world's ultimate miracle, The Resurrection.
My oldest was about 5 and his brother was around 3. Easter was a big deal to Beth and I and in the weeks leading up to it we had lots of Easter Egg hunts out in the front yard. It was a game the kids loved and so did we. They would wait inside while one of us hid the plastic eggs and then we'd open the front door and off they would go, baskets in hand, straight to the places they last found an egg. It was funny to watch them race past other eggs scattered on the ground beneath their feet as they bee lined it to that special spot they had always found an egg before. I suppose a life message could be drawn from this also but I'll leave that to ya'll to figure out.
In addition to the egg hunts leading up to Easter, Beth would also make an Easter Egg Tree. I would go and hack a small leafless branch off a tree and spray paint it white. Beth would then stick it in a little Easter clay pot she had, put that green plastic grass stuff around it and hang small Easter eggs from all its little branches. She would set it on the buffet in the dining room and then spread more of that green grass around the pot. She'd nestle a couple of ceramic bunny rabbits into the grass and then sprinkle it all with some jelly beans for the rabbits to forage on. All in all it was a very pretty little pagan alter.
On that Easter morning when we came down the stairs into the dining room we found that the Easter Tree was in full bloom. Unknowingly, I had clipped a branch from a dogwood to serve as the Easter Tree. That branch, for all intents and purposes, should have been dead. I had cut it from its source of life, coated it in a hard acrylic paint, stuck it in a dry pot for a week and hung dead weight from its branches. Yet on Easter morning, of all mornings, it refused to give up the purpose for its existence and it pushed out its tender petals through an unnatural shell that constricted it.....and it bloomed.
Was it a miracle, serendipity, a process of biology or just happenstance? You could make a case for any of these as the reason the branch bloomed on that Easter morning. At the time when it happened I was in the, "Wow, that's amazing." camp. But looking back on it now, through the lens of what I have seen and experienced in my life and in Cambodia, my opinion has changed. I have seen miracles in Cambodia. They were real and they were tangible. And now that I know what a miracle feels like I can look back over my life and realize that I walked right past a lot of miracles. Miracles that touched me or those I love. Miracles that changed a heart or charted a different path. Miracles that became obvious in hindsight or miracles so small I didn't even recognize them when I saw them. Like a small little Easter branch that bloomed.
Christ's resurrection could have been God's miracle to end all miracles. After all how do you top Jesus overcoming death, not for his own sake, but for ours. It was the miracle of salvation and redemption. It was such an enormous miracle that it couldn't possibly be ignored, dismissed or misunderstood. But it was and it wasn't. All at the same time. God understands that more people can grasp the finality of the Crucifixion than the hope of the Resurrection. It is for that reason that he still showers this world with miracles both large and small. It is this constant presence of miracles that gives faith the framework to build upon. It is said that all things are possible through faith in Jesus Christ and I believe that God rewards and nurtures that faith with miracles.
I don't know what miracle we will be blessed with in Cambodia this year. We may know it immediately when it happens to our group. It may be with a kid in an orphanage that takes comfort in our love for him. It may be when we get home and God uses the sharing of the experience to touch someone we know. He may use our trip to spread miracles to people and places beyond our comprehension. But every miracle, no matter how small, has the chance to open a heart to faith, then to understanding and then to acceptance of the miracle Christians have been celebrating for 2000 years. That, in itself, is the miracle.
Happy Easter,
Billy Dale
No comments:
Post a Comment