The Healthy Benefits of Kryptonite (II of III)

Truth is, I had a few other thoughts rattling around my brain when I posted my first superhero reflection a day or two ago.

Truth also is that I've been remiss in my work, confessedly on account of it being less fun to do with just one hand. So I was going to let the other thoughts fall through the cracks and maybe catch up on work.

Was.

Then came the blog from a dear family member covering (seriously?) not merely the superhero theme but also one of the principal thoughts I'd given up on getting down in writing.

The link above is probably going to be good for years, but my rule of thumb is to assume no such thing. So I shamelessly will post Koodaigirl's post here en todo.

Hard Questions (By Koodaigirl)

"Why?"... she stumbled to formulate her question. Sweet girl.

She asked, with hesitation, as if unsure of the appropriateness. Maybe she was wondering, 'Can I even ask such a question?' ...

"Why... do you think... why, would God allow you to have this long term illness? Is there something... anything... is there a 'reason'? What has He shown you?"

What a question! What a beautiful, honest, appropriate question. We ask it all the time, don't we? Deep in our hearts, we wonder. We hesitate to ask. Why, Lord? We want to understand. We want reason behind pain and suffering. I have asked this question about many things through the years. Sometimes, I get 'the answer' (or an answer) and sometimes I don't. A hard question. No easy-come answers, to be sure.

But, when this young gal asked (who has her own long-term illness with which she must wrestle), ... when she asked... I had an answer. I knew the answer.

It surprised me.

It came so quickly to my mind and so clearly to my heart... that I just knew. I knew ---at least---one of the reasons He has allowed me to suffer with pain, weakness, and illness (in varying degrees) my whole life.

It is my Kryptonite. That was the thought. A funny thought, right!?

I am ...as I truly believe we ALL are... a gifted, competent, strong person. I am super-girl. This illness has given me a gift--a huge gift.

My answer to her was simple: It is my Kryptonite. It reminds me most days that I need God. I desperately, desperately need Him. I have weakness and that is okay... I have a strong God!

I believe that if I hadn't been allowed this suffering, I would have easily done life on my own. Entirely.

My pain and illness have been a key... a pathway and a light along the path; always leading me to my desperation for God. Through the years of suffering, if I have 'learned' anything it would be my need of God: as my Father, my Deliverer, my Provider, my Calm, my Shepherd, my Strength, and my Shield. I, laughingly, admit that I can't even sleep without Him. It's true. I can't!

I have learned--- and continue to learn every day--- that His grace is truly sufficient. (2 Corinthians 12:8-9)

After sharing this with my young friend, she said a profound thing, "Wow. That is almost the exact thought that has been growing in my heart these past weeks." God has been answering her hard, awkward question, too.

Yes! I am so glad you asked, sweet girl.

Closing Reflections (From Pilgrim)

Thank you, Koodaigirl! So many good thoughts.

Superheroes make the present world perfect (sorta) but suffering directs our attention away from our present world (which, sooner or later, will fall wildly short of perfection) to a perfect world (a promised land) that we have not yet taken hold of.

Kryptonite prevents fictional superheroes from saving the world, but for us mere mortals it delivers a timely (if painful) reminder that we are not superheroes. And that we desperately need our Savior God.

Let that be an encouragement to all of us. Superheroes are a fiction, but God is real. He is indeed our Strength. Our Shield. And, best of all, His plan is not to preserve an endless truce with evil in an imperfect world. Superheroes will face new problems tomorrow, but God has promised us a final victory and a redeemed world made perfect. Perfect for Good.

But there's another blessing that Krypronite bestows upon us. That for the next blog post, but a hint of it here.

In an earlier post, Koodaigirl made me aware of singer Audrey Assad, who has been singing to me non-stop now for a week or two. I'm not exaggerating. I have a touch of Asperger's and my tolerance for repetition really is that high! Yes, when I fall in love with some new music, I play it non-stop for a while.

I mention Audrey Assad here because (all topics eventually return me to my recent thumb injury) I have not been sleeping well, of late. Normally? I sleep soundly every night. But with a cast on and two throbbing fingers, I've now been tossing and turning for weeks.

Should we laugh? Cry? Do both? I'm not sure. But during several sleepless nights I could literally hear Audrey singing to me. She kept singing the same song. All night long. (Is she Asperger's too?) What was she singing?

Wait for it...

Restless

And I'm restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
I am restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
Oh God, I wanna rest in You

..And Other Lies Batman Taught Me (I of III)

God Speaks

The saga with my thumb injury continues.

Over the past six months I have spent countless hours doing and receiving therapy on it. To call it time wasted twiddling my thumbs would be close to the mark. "Twiddling my thumb" would be even closer still.

This is not the life I ordered.

The other day I walked in beautiful sunshine. Laps around the office building where I normally work. Thumb therapy break. May as well do it in the sun, I guess.

As I walked, I ruminated on the time I was wasting, possibly to no use. Who knows. If all goes perfectly, I'll have half the healthy thumb I had before this fiasco began. The other outcomes go downhill from there.

"I am spending my life tending to an injured thumb."

That's not hero stuff. But then I spoke these words to myself:

"What I do is a lot less important than who I am."

The things I can no longer do? They don't define me.

How I react to this loss? Now that says a lot about who I am. It also speaks volume as to how much I trust the God who runs this place.

Who will I become in response to this loss? Will I be bitter? Or will I wait patiently to see how God will work his magic, bringing good out of this mess that is my life.

These were stern words: a silent sermon served up to myself by myself. But I was and am confident that this sermon was faithful to the testimony of the panoply of scriptures.

The Bible is nothing if not a salve for those who are suffering. Pain is the key that makes visible to us the message of hope that was there all along.

But I digress, and besides... someone else is waiting to speak.

Batman Speaks

I went home later that day and ran into my son watching Batman Begins.

Heady stuff.

But as I watched Bruce Wayne recover from a crushing blow to his body delivered via a massive falling beam of wood in a burning home, I turned to my son with a smile.

"He'll be Batman in three minutes, whole and strong. But I'm still unable to recover, after six months, from an accident that happened while I was washing a dish in the kitchen!"

But then came the coup de grâce. A few minutes later, Batman explained a deep truth to the hot chick who wanted to know who it was under the mask. Batman paused dramatically, then turned to her and answered...

"It's Not Who I Am Underneath, But What I Do That Defines Me."

Wait a minute. That sounds familiar. Except it's reversed.

And it's a lie.

Batman may be defined by what he does, and that's cute. It does make for exciting action flicks. But Batman doesn't exist. For the rest of us flesh-and-blood mortals, Batman's fiction doesn't work too well.

We mortals die when 200-Lb ceiling beams fall on us. Heck, a Pyrex casserole pan was enough to do me in!

But unlike our fictitious superheroes, we mortals are (thankfully) still useful to God when we're broken messes. Thank God, we're not required to perform our way through a Hollywood CGI extravaganza in order to prove useful to God.

[I can hear the question out there. "Don't we all know this? It's a stupid superhero movie. Don't over-analyze it, Pilgrim!" OK, I hear that thought. But we humans become what we eat, and the lies we hear from our entertainment? They don't flush out of our system so cleanly as all that. That's why I take Batman's message seriously.]

What Batman said was a lie. But I say that principally because he jumped off a tall building just after saying it.

(News flash: Jumping off tall buildings doesn't define who we are.)

But what Batman said is also quite true. Here's what I mean.

Remember the old faith-vs-works conundrum? "Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds." We could go around this merry-go-round a few times, and both parties have a point.

Who I am is revealed by what I do. True!! And how.

What I do also changes me. It affects who I become. Also true!! And how.

Both good points, but Batman's saying something else. He's saying, "I am who I am because I save the world."

Jesus could get away with those words, but Batman is out of his depth. He speaks the lie of an output-obsessed culture that no longer know how to face or embrace silence. That, my friends, is cowardice. It takes bravery of a very special sort to faithfully observe Sabbath rests.

The truth is this: I can be priceless to God. While twiddling my thumb.

So can you.

Let that be an encouragement to the both of us.

To Be Continued...

If It Can't Be Measured, It Must Be Really Important

In business, I'd be laughed out of the office with such a claim. Everyone in business (and among a number of church leaders) knows that it's supposed to go this way:

"If it can't be measured, It doesn't exist."

Those words have never sat well with me, but usually my beef was that there are important things that are hard to measure. Love, just for openers, right?

But a few days ago my brother directed me toward a TED talk (given by Brene Brown) that began with this fabled business nostrum. And then the woman went on to discuss, for some twenty minutes, topics of vital importance. Vulnerability. Gratitude. Joy. Belief.

None of these things could be measured. Not one.

And the more I reflected on it, the more I came to the conviction that the business claim didn't merely fall short of reality. It literally is flip-flopped with reality. It's not sorta off the mark. It's wildly off the mark.

That's not to say that nothing that is measurable matters. Far from it. The business claim arose because we've discovered how many things in life can be improved if we just start measuring things and paying attention to the numbers.

Fair enough. And true.

But if we look closely at those things we can improve by those means, they are peripheral things to what is, at core, most important about life itself. Paying attention to the numbers when examining immunological results may result in a better vaccine. Too true. But the thing that matters more is the lives we were trying to save in the first place.

As if to drive this thought home, the next TED talk that walked, uninvited, into my browser space, dove right into the heart of what I'm trying to say.

As Brene Brown's talk wound down, TED.com flipped me to the next talk in the queue. In this next video, Barry Schwartz spoke on the loss of wisdom.

Mr. Schwartz began his talk by projecting on screen a list of the duties (all quite measurable) that a hospital janitor needs to perform.

There was nothing surprising about the list of duties. Mop the floor. Empty the trash cans. Etc. etc.

But then Schwartz pointed out that none of the duties in the list made reference to any other human being. Not one. "The janitor's job could be done in a mortuary just as well as in a hospital."

But Schwartz then began to explain the sorts of things on that list that janitor's did or didn't do. And why.

The janitor who didn't mop the floor because patient X was trying to relearn how to walk and needed a dry hallway.

The janitor who didn't vacuum the visitor's lounge because exhausted family members on vigil were presently napping there.

Some quibbler could try to quantify and codify better janitorial instructions, but that would be to miss the point. Matters of the heart cannot be measured. But you can tell who is listening to the whispers of wisdom. They will do their job better than anyone overly focused on the numbers.

I have work to do today. I'm behind on that work. Is the time spent on this blog well spent? Good luck answering that one.

But if the time spent putting these thoughts down helps me to remember that unmeasurable things are generally the most important ones, that will make this blogging excursion a profitable one. I will hopefully (like those janitors) drop my job the moment I hear the whisper of God telling me I need to do something that nobody is measuring.

Not with numbers, anyway.

(34 + 47) <> (35 + 46)

In mathematics, I'd be on shaky ground with my headline claim.

But (unusually, for me) I'm not talking math. I'm talking Psalms.

This reflection will be brief. I am, again, pecking with one hand, pretty much, as I sit here and type. My tendon injury (mentioned in prior blogs that I am too lazy/constrained to locate) re-ruptured.

It's amazing how efficient you get on activities that are no longer easy. You find ways to economize. After writing the above, it occurred to me that I could just post (here) a recent update I emailed to people. It should cover the gist of my recent travails.

(This update comes on the heels of a 2nd surgery I underwent in which the goal was to borrow a tendon from my ring-finger and transfer it over to my thumb. There are two tendons in each finger, and the one we wanted was the one that bends the joint "closest" to the ring. The tendon that bends the last joint... that's the tendon we wanted to leave in place.)

Ok. Here comes the update.

-----------------------------------------

The short update is that surgery went fine except for one thing. When the doctor opened up my hand at the base of my ring finger so as to get a new tendon for my thumb, he snipped and took the wrong tendon.

Have I got your attention yet?

Yeah, sadly this is not a joke. The good news is that the oops apparently isn't such a big deal. We hope.

[Sidebar commentary. I have a long history of winning the tendon lottery, and it's not the kind of lottery one wants to win.

Ruptured left Achilles as a 22-year-old. That injury is supposed to happen to 40-year-olds. Lottery win #1.

Ruptured right Achilles tendon 10 years later. My ankle doctor could only think of 1 or 2 other cases where someone had ruptured both ankles. Lottery win #2.

Ruptured thumb while washing dishes. Lottery win #3.

Re-ruptured thumb 3 months after the repair surgery. 1% chance of that happening so late in the game. Lottery win #4.

The stage is now set for our next win....]

It played out like this: the doctor came out to my wife after surgery and said that after he snipped the proper tendon, my finger reacted strangely. Upon investigation, he discovered that the tendons in my finger were reversed from the normal top/bottom order. "I've been doing this surgery for forty years." he told her, "I've never seen the tendons reversed before. And tendons are my specialty."

Lottery win #5. Friends, I am getting tired of winning the tendon lottery.

So the deed having already been done, the doctor went with the tendon he had already snipped. Not like he had a choice, at that point.

-----------------------------------------

So what does all this have to do with Mathematics or the Psalms?

Just this: I turned 47 years old late last month.

That doesn't explain much, does it? OK, OK, here's what I mean. Each year I memorize two Psalms. When I turned 41 I memorized 41 and 40. When I turned 42, I did 42 and 39. If I should live long enough, I'll eventually memorize Psalms 80 and 1. By then I'll be old enough to justify reducing my load to one Psalm per year. When I'm 81 I'll just memorize Psalm 81.

*IF* I even live that long!

So last year I memorized Psalms 35 and 46. Strangely enough, the Psalms for each year have been ringing true to my circumstances, and I'm sad to report that Psalms 35 and 46 are not happy Psalms.

Psalm 46 covers turmoil in the world. A twist on Jesus' words about the poor is apropos here. "World turmoil you will always have with you." Nevertheless, my own personal world was more roiled than normal last year. The words "Be still, and know that I am God" were well received by yours truly last year.

Psalm 35 is an expression of personal grief, however, and rather explicit about the cause of the problem: treacherous non-friends. Well, I nearly made it out of the year with that one proving not-so-applicable to my life.

Until, that is, my wife was essentially accused of theft at work by a person we can only guess was jealous of her. The accusation was made (and the interrogation by two police officers)... yep. On my birthday. Psalm 35 reads like a script for this unwelcome drama. Scarily spot on.

I will wrap this rather odd reflection up with an observation, and it's this: Psalms 34 and 47 look really, really, really good right about now. They are repeated exhortations that we praise God without ceasing. Celebrations of God's goodness.

That sounds awesome. Last year, to quote queen Elizabeth, really was an "annus horribilis". Repeated tendon injuries, work problems, and the crowning honor of my wife's interrogation for petty theft she did not commit.

So I hope and pray indeed that it proves true. That (34 + 47) <> (35 + 46).

But even if it doesn't work out that way, the exhortations are still welcome.

Psalm 34: 1-3

I will extol the Lord at all times;
   his praise will always be on my lips.
I will glory in the Lord;
   let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
Glorify the Lord with me;
   let us exalt his name together...

When did David write this? We're told! Psalm 34 is... "Of David. When he pretended to be insane before Abimelek, who drove him away, and he left."

David wasn't celebrating because his life was calm, tranquil and defined by ease. Not by a long shot. He wrote that Psalm because he was alive and not dead. 1 Samuel 20-22 covers the situation, and it is a horrifying mess. King Saul is out to get David. To kill him.

Psalm 34 (a song of celebration!) was written by a man who had only days earlier been marked out for death by the highest authority in the land.

Whether the last Psalm I memorize is 46 or 81, I hope I am able to recite it with gratitude to God in my heart. Regardless of the circumstances.

Just Give Me The Fluffy Pink Jesus

Every now and then, circumstances seem to push me to "hurry up and put that thought down in writing." Over the past week, a combination of David, TJ and Jesus triple-teamed me, so here we are.

Everyone knows Jesus, but who are David and TJ?

The American

David is a friend of mine from college who has been living in Turkey for nearly twenty years. Now, Turkey is not the most dangerous nation in the world, but in my generation there is an immortalized quote from that 70s movie Airplane: "Joey, have you ever been in a... in a Turkish prison?"

No, Joey has not been to a Turkish prison. And the humor, of course, involves the fact that that nobody else wants to, either.

But my friend David has been in Turkish prisons (note the plural). The Turkish government (Turkish and international laws be damned) doesn't like what David is doing in Turkey. Which is?

Oh, just faithfully living as a servant of Jesus Christ in Turkey.

That's a crime? Yes, Joey. Well, No. But the government wants it to be.

(Internet links go stale eventually: Here's a portion of the article...)

U.S. Evangelist in Turkey Detained, Ordered To Be Deported

Turkish authorities have detained a U.S. evangelist and ordered him held for 30 days without charge ahead of deportation, sources said.

Declaring David Byle “a danger to public order,” authorities in Turkey took him into custody on April 6 after asking him to report to the immigration office in Istanbul regarding his application for a residency permit.

The Turk

So David is a very unwelcome American living in Turkey. TJ the Turk? I met him through circumstances only God could arrange. That story for another day.

Suffice it to say that David, TJ and I got together several times while I was visiting David in Turkey in 2002. TJ "escaped" his homeland not too long after that, however, and he has no desire to ever live in Turkey again.

One other thing to know: TJ grew up in a Muslim home but abandoned that faith system a long time ago. He very much loves Jesus, but does not call himself a Christian. (And since so many Christians today are voting for Donald Trump, who can blame him? But we digress.)

So let's get to the point of our story.

Over the years, TJ has continually lamented the fact that David is still living in Turkey. TJ is of the firm opinion that a father of five has no business throwing himself under a Turkish bus.

And since TJ is not a Christian, that's an understandable opinion. What I keep trying to explain to TJ, however, is that David puts Jesus first in his life, and for that love he is willing to risk everything.

Sharing Jesus in Turkey is exactly what David loves to do. (Yes, people do sometimes get killed for that sort of thing in Turkey.)

TJ just can't get his mind around that idea.

...And let's face it. Many professed Christians share TJ's perspective.

It's one thing to profess affection for Jesus. Another to claim to follow him. But it's an act of lunacy to put oneself in physical danger for Jesus. That, my friends, is taking this religious thing a step too far.

With all that as backdrop, a brick hit me in the head a few days ago as I read a commentary on the gospel of Mark. For the first time I realized that this debate between TJ and David is an echo of another much older one that, come to find out, is pretty similar.

The Jew

Mark 3:20-21
Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

So I've read that passage many times before, but here's the difference. I always figured his family really did think Jesus had lost his mind. On this pass, thanks to a commentary, I read those words differently.

The NIV Bible Background Commentary explains...

Because false teachers were sometimes thought to be inspired by demons and the official penalty for misleading God's people this way was death (Deut 13:5; 18:20), Jesus' family had reason to want to reach him before the legal experts did.

Is there any indication from Mark that this is what they were worried about? Let's read the next verse.

Mark 3:22
And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

Does TJ really think David is insane? No! He just thinks that David is behaving irresponsibly, throwing his life away under a Turkish bus.

Did Jesus's family really think he was insane? No! But I bet they did think he was throwing his life away under a Jerusalem bus.

TJ is a wonderful person, and he really cares about David. He just doesn't want David to get hurt. Jesus' family had similar concerns.

So what's the right response? Read on.

Mark 3:31-35
Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

The right response is this: Radical faith requires radical actions. Even if people think you're behaving irresponsibly.

Fluffy faith likes a fluffy Jesus. But Jesus wasn't fluffy. Jesus was radical.

More from that commentary:

"Thinking of one's coreligionists as brothers and sisters was common; Respecting older persons as mothers or fathers was also widespread. But allowing ties in the religious community to take precedence over family ties was unheard-of in Judaism..."

Doesn't that sound exactly like Christianity in the West today? Brothers, sisters... lovey-dovey and a fluffy pink Jesus. But nobody should risk their lives or the lives of loved ones for any of this stuff! Family first!

But Jesus doesn't see it that way. He begs to differ. Will we hear his voice?

The commentary continues:

"Jesus is not rejecting his earthly family althogether but stating his priories, because they want to declare him mentally incompetent to rescue him from the dangers he is sure to face from religious authorities if he continues on his present path.

So the question is this: Which Jesus do we want? Fluffy Pink? Or Radical? The path we take will likely make it clear how we decided on that question.

I cracked open Facebook this morning and saw this post.

"Yeah," I thought to myself, "I should write that blog."

With that very thought rattling in my head, I then went upstairs, where I heard my wife praying a child out the door to school. "And thank you Jesus, for bringing David home to his family."

OK, maybe get it down today?

So here I am, wrapping up the story of Jesus' choice. Of David's choice.

What, my friends, will we choose?

Stuff I Should Have Learned In Middle School

Remember that popular book titled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? I was reminded of that book yesterday.

It began with my little worrier who is now in Middle School. She wanted a ride to school early so that she could hurry and procure some study materials that she needed for an exam that would happen later that day.

Yeah. That ain't happening.

First of all, she's got straight A's. For seconders, she's in seventh grade. There's no class in seventh grade that puts us in a make-or-break situation, let alone a single test. (And the circumstances that led to this urgency were not due to her negligence, either, BTW...)

That having been said, it's admirable to want to do your best, and her attention to such things will yield dividends for decades. I wish one of the other siblings would acquire a bit more of this passion for excellence in schoolwork! But we digress.

One of my main jobs as this child's parent is not to push her to study harder but rather to encourage her to not worry. She worries. Way too much.

I've said to her the very things I am writing here.

"No, honey, I'm not going to take you to school early in the car. The bus will be fine, and I won't give you any grief at all if the exam goes poorly. Don't worry about it. The only thing I'm concerned about right now is that you do your best and develop good study habits."

A lot of good that does. She frets. Worries. And stews.

It does concern me a bit, that she's such a perfectionist. But by the same token, I admit I do find it a bit amusing. "The stuff she thinks is so important!" I'll think to myself. Then I'll shake my head, knowing that in three years she'll never remember any of these things that had her brain in fight-or-flight mode today.

And then it all came back to me after I went to bed.

Several minutes after I went to bed.

Like, thirty minutes after I went to bed. Or maybe it was forty.

Normally I fall asleep a lot faster. But lately I've had a thumb injury that has plagued my thoughts at night. The surgery to fix it is expensive. Recovery is expected to be limited.

Oh. And my oldest is heading off to college. An expensive one.

And work? For the first time in a long time, it has been a bit dicey.

So, No. I've not been sleeping very well, of late.

You can see it coming, can't you? Yeah. All of a sudden, lying there in bed last night, I had to smile. Here I am, stewing in my worries.

And you just know what God's thinking...

“Child, you are as silly as your daughter. Do you think I will give you grief over things beyond your control that don't go perfectly? Do you?"

"And did I hear you telling her that you're only interested in her doing her best? Developing good study habits? My son! What do you think I'm hoping to see you gain out of what you are experiencing right now??"

Yeah. I think, now that you mention it, God has been clear on that topic:

Matthew 6:25-34 excerpted
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ... Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“You of little faith... Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Yes, Lord, I hear your voice again. Thank you. I remember my job now.

Help me to sleep well tonight, will you please?

Easter Is For Losers

This past Easter was not that happy chocolate-strewn joyfest it usually is. For openers, our youngest was down with the flu for most of the week preceding Easter, and that same virus proceeded in our home from host to host, not satisfied merely to take out only one of us. Before it was over, almost all of us had received our share of the misery.

All part of the pallor of this glorious resurrection week.

But all of this was just backdrop to the greater shadow hanging over my Easter week. In a recent blog, I touched on a Christmas-gift injury: a ruptured thumb tendon. Well, that should have been healed by March, but as one doctor put it recently, "Congratulations! You won the lottery!"

Hardy-har-har. He was referring to the fact that I re-ruptured it in mid-March. Re-ruptures that many weeks after surgery place me among the unlucky 1% that the other 99% do not envy.

So on Easter Sunday, I was awaiting a doctor's appointment on Tuesday to get a second opinion on whether and how we might try to restore some functionality to my right thumb. But here's the strange thing....

All these bodily ailments made Easter all the more special.

Yes, strange to say, this miserable Easter Sunday stands above the rest. This Easter I celebrated what we're supposed to be celebrating all along:

A final victory that is yet to come. A victory for losers.

I've come to appreciate the practice of giving something up Lent. Doing so doesn't make me holy, but it does remind me of loss and helps me to await the arrival of Easter with greater vigilance. But these lenten denials are just 2D imitations of 3D suffering, because after Easter has passed we joyfully resume consumption of that which we had temporarily denied ourselves.

My thumb injury, however, didn't go away on Easter morning, and it served as a poignant reminder that Easter is for permanent losers. The significance of Easter will grow for us in an intimate way when we face death as a more present reality.

This is not to play down the blessings we experience here on Earth as disciples of Christ. They are real. But the great victory Christ has won for us is over death. And, for now, we're alive.

Yes, my thumb injury introduced me to permanent loss and to hints of my mortality. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a minor setback.

It's been a different story, however, for a dear friend of mine. I received news yesterday that his wife had drowned in a tragic accident. On an Easter vacation.

A husband bereaved. Three children, the youngest still just a toddler, now without a mother. Can anyone understand the darkness he faces? Not me.

But Jesus does. Jesus faced death. Met it. And overcame it. For us.

For my friend I pray in the midst of this all-consuming darkness that a glimmer of light will shine, giving him Easter's hope for a day yet to come.

He will see his wife again. His children will see their mother again.

1 Corinthians 15:54
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

Now more than ever, I am keenly aware of that first word: When.