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Yesterday, I had one of those days that did not go according to “my” plans.  It did make for a good story later, but at the moment I found myself quite frustrated and irritated that I had to drop everything for someone else and that I didn’t get to eat lunch until mid-afternoon.  I had to do something on the computer that I really didn’t know how to do.  I had someone on the phone walking me through it, but the phone cord was too short to reach to the computer so I had to keep dropping the receiver, go work on the computer, and then back to pick up the phone. (I hope you’re laughing at this point–but let me assure you, I wasn’t.) I did have the brilliant idea at one point to switch a cord and handset from another phone–but when I went to hang it up…

It’s still the time, the season, of remembering Christ’s appearances to those He loved.  Let us not move too quickly back into ordinary time.  (Is there ever an “ordinary” time with Christ in our lives?)  Luci Shaw captures this need to learn to recognized Him in this Sunday-poem.  We, too, need to “get beyond the way he looks” in our everyday lives:

He who has seen Me has seen the Father (James Tissot)

“. . . for they shall see God”

Matthew 5.8

Christ risen was rarely
recognized by sight.
They had to get beyond the way he looked.
Evidence strong than his voice and face and footstep
waited to grow in them, to guide
their groping from despair,
their stretching beyond belief.

We are as blind as they
until the opening of our deeper eyes
shows us the hands that bless
and break our bread,
until we finger
wounds…

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time’s covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the…

In this Year of Mercy, it is important for you to remember that the Shepherd is looking for you, not just everyone else.  We are all, in some sense of another, lost sheep.  Let Him find you.

“The Gospel tells us that the Lord went in search of the lost sheep.  How are we to understand this search?  . . . Now if anybody seeks anything earnestly, it is not in one little corner only, but in every corner and place till he finds it.  And so God seeks you–let him find you everywhere he may look, in all circumstances of your life.  Whatever shame comes on you, know that that is the place in which God is looking for a gentle and meek soul; therefore suffer yourself to be constantly trodden underfoot until you have well learned your lesson of meekness.

“God is looking for a poor man…

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom,
the moon only when it is cloudless? 
To long for the moon while looking on the rain,
to lower the blinds and be unaware
of the passing of the spring –
these are even more deeply moving. 
Branches about to blossom
or gardens strewn with flowers
are worthier of our admiration.
~Yoshida Kenko

Beauty, to the Japanese of old, held together the ephemeral with the sacred. Cherry blossoms are most beautiful as they fall, and that experience of appreciation lead the Japanese to consider their mortality. Hakanai bi (ephemeral beauty) denotes sadness, and yet in the awareness of the pathos of life, the Japanese found profound beauty.

For the Japanese, the sense of beauty is deeply tragic, tied to the inevitability of death.

Jesus’ tears were also ephemeral and beautiful. His tears remain with us as an enduring reminder of…