To the Eleven.

Our two older sons have just celebrated their two year wedding anniversaries with their brides. Over the last several weeks, Lea and I have slowed to delight in looking at hundreds of images from the 23 days that made up March 23rd to April 14th in the year 2018. Taylor and Ashley were married at the Whitestone Country Inn in Paint Rock, TN. Three weekends later, Trent and Meg were married on a mango plantation in Todos Santos, Mexico. We deeply drank in the gift of Taylor and Ashley's wedding weekend. We swam in the lavish joy of a friend and family retreat over the long weekend at this special location as we lingered with one another in anticipation of hearing wedding vows. And then we kept anticipating because 3 weekends later we were at the Dancing Ranch of the Sun in Todos Santos, Mexico for another family and friend feast to hear Trent and Meg speak vows to each other.

Twenty three days of holy anticipation, savoring relationships and watching God honor Himself. It was gloriously thick. It was surreal to close one wedding weekend and still be awaiting another one to come just days away. In between the two wedding weekends we celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus on Easter and tended our newly planted garden at Story Cottage in Knoxville. Having participated in the first wedding feast made me all the more hungry for participating in the next one that would follow only days later.

I wanted to be there. I so intensely wanted to be present in those moments of family feasting. I couldn't imagine not getting to celebrate in the culmination of the anticipation of so much richness of relationship. Imperfect and filled with the pain of earth bound relating for sure, but I wanted to celebrate. I didn't want to miss it. And you may say, well, duh Damon. Of course. But relational paths don't always lead to celebration. Relationships don't always end up at feasting tables.

As I listened to my pastor Louis reading from the Bible book of Luke, chapter 24, early this past Easter morning, that thought is what struck me. Living life in connection with the incarnated Jesus must have been one of the most rich, addictive, relational gifts imaginable. The relational energy of being connected to the savoring and suffering of Jesus is almost unfathomable. Imagine what it would have been like to have been one of the "in person" friends of Jesus in that time. So much suffering. So much savoring. Imagine having inside jokes with Jesus. Imagine experiencing in person how His death was no joke. Imagine getting to be one of the twelve that got to be on the inside of it with Jesus. But relational paths don't always lead to celebration.

Women were the first to arrive at the tomb of Jesus days after He had been crucified. They find the stone of Jesus' tomb rolled away. In their shock, two gleaming men urge them to not be looking for death, but to be looking for One who is alive. In a relational rush of adrenaline, hope and craziness, the women go to tell their friends, those closest to them, those closest to Jesus about what they have seen. And here is the moment that I have been pondering. It says that when they came back from the tomb, they told all the things that they had seen "to the Eleven".

Sadness. Loss. Such loss.

The eleven had been twelve. Matthew's gospel tells us that Jesus' betrayer Judas, one of the twelve, was seized with remorse at his betrayal of his friend Jesus. He threw the betrayal money into the temple and went away and hanged himself. Dead and gone. He didn't get to celebrate in the culmination of the anticipation of so much richness of relationship. The suffering and the savoring. That loss really stood out to me as I listened to Louis read the Scripture on Sunday. I don't want to miss it.

If you have any awareness of the richness of being in relationship with Jesus today, celebrate.

If you have any awareness that you are not in relationship with Jesus and you are somehow seeing that today, celebrate. That is a rich awareness.

The cross of Jesus Christ is the costly celebration of both people.

The cross sirens.....

THERE IS MORE.