Verna Dozier, an early member in the Church of the Saviour, wrote that the green hill outside of Jerusalem existed in God’s heart long before Jesus was born. It is important to continue to ponder that statement and that hill, perhaps especially during Lent. That green hill is the place of agonizing surrender. It is the place of transformed suffering. It is the place of unimaginable forgiveness. It is the place of the eternal breakthrough of a resurrection reality. It is the place of trust to creative, overflowing Love. It is the place of Jesus’ love glorified.
So when Jesus talks about a seed having to die to bear fruit, * I have to remember that his vision is way beyond mine. This is about more than what I know about plants and gardens. It helps me stretch my imagination to remember the Bible begins and ends in a garden. They are gardens like no other, fully representing God’s dream of peace and harmony. In the beginning, in Genesis, all that was created was beautiful and good. In Revelation, the glorified Jesus is the great reaper, harvesting all the Earth. And the leaves of the trees along the riverbanks are extraordinary. They are for the healing of the nations.
When Jesus goes on to say, “hate your life in this world to keep it for eternal life,” I want to figure out just what he means. Finding life means losing it. What exactly does that mean for me now? He sees possibilities beyond my imagination. That green hill outside Jerusalem points to them.
-- Ann Dean, Dayspring Church
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Meditate on the prayers and drawings of Thomas Merton in Dialogues with Silence, edited by Jonathan Montaldo. From one prayer (p. 53):
The way you have laid open before me is an easy way, compared with the hard way of my own will which leads back to Egypt and to bricks without straw…
Only save me from myself. Save me from my own private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement’s sake, to unsettle everything that You have ordained. Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. This is what I live for. Amen, amen.
