The light, falling through broken blinds on our unmade bed and the books piled up, dog-eared and clothes on the floor and laundry folded in a basket waiting to be put away. It was early morning and the boys, all four of them this Easter weekend, were doing a candy-hunt outside with Trent. Spring was sounding in the snow melting in the gutters, and this bedroom was, for all of its unkempt-ness, heavy with something holy.
I was in my pajamas and making the bed but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t alone. And I turned, and friends: I saw him. Not with my physical eyes, but with my spiritual ones. I don’t know how else to explain it, but on Sunday morning, Easter morning, Resurrection morning, Jesus entered my bedroom and stood in the middle of the un-vacummed carpet and held out his crucified hands to me.
And he told me he wanted me to see him, to know him intimately because of what I would be facing in the coming weeks and months. Because of the calling he’s placed on my life to be a voice in the desert and me standing in my pajamas with the light splitting through broken blinds.
I didn’t say anything. I just stood there. Felt the heaviness of the holy and heard the sound of children’s laughter through the window and felt the warmth of his body in that room. I didn’t physically see him. Yet I knew he was there, and I heard him, with the ears of my soul.
And then he was gone and I was left with the distinct impression that I was changed.
I was still in my grey flannels but you can’t encounter the risen Lord and hear him say your name and remain the same.
But there’s always a choice.
And even as I slipped into church clothes and stubbed my toe while quietly swearing I wondered if it had all been a dream, and just like that I needed to choose to believe.
Each day, I choose. Many moments, I choose. It could have been a piece of undigested beef. Or it could have been Jesus. That sunrise could have been a gift, or just a cosmic occurrence. That healing could have been the doctors, or God answering prayer.
I choose to believe. Because if I don’t… if I say, “That was nice, but it probably wasn’t a visitation from Jesus. It was probably too many late nights or my imagination or…” then each day, I’ll believe a little less until one day, I’ll wake up, and all I’ll have is doubt.
I’m not saying I don’t doubt. But I doubt with the intent of discovering truth. I doubt out-loud to God. I speak it to God in conversation, I tell him what I’m struggling with, and I lay out my fleece, over and over, because I’m Gideon to the tenth degree and my faith is smaller than a mustard seed, and I need God, I need God, I need him.
So those ordinary, everyday moments in which Christ transfigures himself–maybe through the kiss of a child or through an answered prayer or through an extra twenty-dollar bill found in your pocket or a bag of groceries at your front door–those are pivotal. They are sacred altars disguised as daily trivialry. They are tests disguised as chance. They are gifts disguised as cosmic occurrences.
We are not physical beings. We are spiritual ones, having a physical experience. But unless we choose to believe it, we’ll never find a resurrected Jesus standing in our bedrooms while the sunlight leaks through broken blinds.
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so won’t you join us, as we “walk each other home”? (ram dass)
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