“I will make it go forth,” declares the Lord of hosts,

“and it will enter the house of the thief

and the house

of the one who swears falsely by My name;

and it will spend the night within that house

and consume it with its timber and stones.”

Zechariah 5:4

This morning as I was studying through the book of Zechariah I read Zechariah 5:4, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely by My name; and I thought of how my sister-in-law’s example with her company is a perfect example of application for this verse.

Now on the first day of the week 

Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb,

while it was still dark,

and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. 

John 20:1

Destiny’s Child had a song called, Say My Name. The lyrics went, “say my name, say my name, you actin kinda shady ain’t callin’ me baby, why the sudden change… if you ain’t runnin games… say my name, say my name“

There is something quite powerful about someone saying our name. Destiny’s Child sings about it. Shakespeare wrote plays about it. Dale Carnegie teaches techniques to help leaders learn people’s names because it is so important for success in business and really for life in general.

Your name is important.

Your name is used to get your attention and your name is used to show that you have someone’s attention…

Mary returns to the tomb… what does she see but the stone rolled away. Of course her first thought is that they had taken His body… those Pharisees… the council… Rome.

How could they?

Was the Friday torture not enough?

Would they destroy His dead lifeless body as well?

Could they really be that cruel?

Mary knew that yes… they could. She had lived in the perversions of man. She knew the depths of which they could steep. Now she turns and she runs to find Peter and John. I find it interesting that she ran to Peter and John. I believe she knew she could trust these men to do something… what she might not know… but they would do something.

The men entered the tomb to investigate. Jesus was gone. The tomb was indeed empty, they held His grave cloths in their hand… at a loss… a complete loss. What was going on? I can see the two men looking at one another shaking their heads… trying to work out in their minds what they should do next. However, not knowing what to do, not yet understanding the Scriptures, they just went home.

But not Mary.

Mary stayed at the tomb. She is after all a woman. Mary would need a good cry. It was time for a meltdown moment. She would need to fall to the ground and place her hands over her head and weep until her nose was red and running and her face soaked with salty tears, that poured so thick out of her eyes that they ran down her cheek and down her neck and soaked the veil that hung around her shoulders.

She had stayed and watched it all. She had been there when they laid Him in the tomb. She had came early to be near Him in the only way she knew how… and He was gone.

Yes, it was time for a meltdown.

Then she’s interrupted. She looks up through red-eyed, tear-blurred vision and doesn’t even question where these men came from… there is after all no telling how long she had been heaving these sobs. She speaks to these men, hoping they can tell her something… and then she turns:

When she had said this,

she turned around and saw Jesus standing there,

and did not know that it was Jesus.

John 20:14

He was there!

Right there!

Right there in front of her, yet she did know it was Him.

In that day it will be said to Jerusalem:
“Do not be afraid, O Zion;
Do not let your hands fall limp.
“The Lord your God is in your midst,
A victorious warrior.
He will exult over you with joy,
He will be quiet in His love,
He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

Zephaniah 3:16-17

Right there in her midst… How many of us have Him right here in our midst yet we do not see Him. But when He said her name… she recognized Him. There is indeed something quite powerful in someone saying our name.

I was the first on the scene of a vehicle accident about fifteen years ago. I actually witnessed it happen, should have been involved in it, but by God’s grace was spared. I was sitting in a side parking lot in one vehicle, talking to my mother and grandmother who were in another. As we sat and talked we saw the car pull out and we saw the diesel truck top the hill…

We knew it was coming but could do nothing.

The truck slamed into the car as he tried to stop and somehow instead of continuing in the direction straight toward our vehicles, he manages to turn the wheel and send his truck, that was now attached to this car, into a tree on the other side of the road.

I jumped out of my vehicle and ran to the car expecting to see death, I couldn’t tell if there was a pulse or not, I couldn’t tell if there was breathing or not… I saw the young woman’s purse and grabbed it trying to find out who she was. I saw that her name was Katie…

The moment I addressed her by her name her eyes shot open and she began moaning and crying…

She lived.

There is something powerful in knowing that someone knows our name. There is a reason people want to see their name in lights on a stage. There is a reason people want to see their name in the paper. There is a reason we do play bulletins with the cast and character list. There is a reason that hand out football programs. There is a reason we announce the player as they go up to bat. There is a reason it matters that someone knows our name.

I remember well the moment that Jesus said my name… I thought He had forsaken me. I thought He would never want me. I thought He was far from me… but the moment He said my name I could see that He had been there with me all along. I was just too caught up in my own meltdown to see Him.

Precious one, I don’t know where you are today… I don’t know if you can see Him or not… but trust me, He is in your midst… He knows your name.

This was written in December 2008… found it in my FB notes. It was pre-blog days.

I am studying the Psalms during my mornings with my God, and I am currently learning more about my Saviour from Psalms 22, 23, and 24. These mornings have been so sweet as we draw near to Christmas, the day we have chosen to celebrate the birth of Christ, the Messiah, the Promised Seed, the Saviour, the Only One who can say “Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother’s breast. Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb.”(Psalm 22:9-10).

Jesus is the only man or woman to ever be born without the reproach of sin. Conceived by the Holy Spirit of God in the womb of a virgin. “Who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”(Philippians 2:6-8).

Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”(Psalm 22:1) He cried out with such anguish that the rocks shook. Jesus, the God-Man, always in perfect union and fellowship with the Father, cries out, because for the first and only time the Father had to forsake Him, as the sins of the world were placed upon Him, as He fully God and fully man, completely laid aside His divine in order to suffer in His body the due penalty of my sins, He cried out, forsaken. Christ on the cross, with no where to turn, and with no one to turn to, before the time of the cross, no matter what earthly family or friend turned His back on Him, Jesus always had the Father, but in this moment, Christ was alone.

He made no sound and no cry for help as He was betrayed by His friends, no sound, no defence, no denial of who He was and is as He stood before the council, no fear no cry for mercy as He stood before Pilate or before the crowd (Isaiah 53:7), on the cross, lifted high as was the bronze serpant on the standard (Numbers 21), Christ finally began to speak. And as the world below looked up at Him and mocked His naked, beaten person, on that cross; as the world below continues to this very day to look up and mock that beautiful God-Man on the cross, Christ cried out and continues to cry out, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”(Luke 23:34).

And as the weight of my sins and your sins were cast upon Him and as the holiness of God turned His face away from Him, Jesus, cried out, with a cry that the likeness of has never been heard before or since, and He was forsaken, alone.

He was alone, so that no other one ever has to be. Because He was forsaken, we never have to be. We can be, if we refuse, but we never HAVE to be.

No matter what happens on this earth, no matter what man may do to me, no matter what circumstaces might come my way, I will never be alone. Even in death, I am not alone, and because of Christ, I will not lie on my death bed in fear or concern of not knowing if I have been good enough to be allowed to enter into the realm of heaven’s eternity, because I have assurance in Him and in His word. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”(John 3:16)

On that cross, Christ breathed His last and said “It is finished”, the debt was paid in full.

“It will be told of the LORD to the coming generation. They will come and will declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has performed it.”(Psalm 22:30-31).

I declare His righteousness today and I declare that He has performed it. I will declare it until I breathe my last, because I believe it with all my heart, all my mind, and all my soul. In no other place do I know of such a God, who would lay aside His divine, His diety, in order to save a wretch like me, but oh, my Eliohim, He did. He did.

“Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live forever!”(Psalm 22:26).

I don’t always understand why. I don’t always understand how. I don’t always get to know when and where and what for. I do, however, always get to know WHO. That Who is my risen Saviour who stands at my Father’s right hand.

We had a strange Easter this year. Both of my girls were home sick and so pretty dresses were left hanging in the closet, no Easter musical was heard, no passion play seen, no colored eggs were searched for, no fancy meal was consumed, no extended family to be hung out with, and no cute pics titled Easter 2013 to be posted or developed.

As the Children’s Ministry Director, I went to Easter Sunday alone in my blue jeans and t-shirt while Dad stayed home to take care of the girls. I spent the morning at Church playing with the babies and getting lots of love hugs from my beautiful little ones. I was the last one to leave the church, as I took poopy diapers to the dumpster and picked up some Chinese take-out on the way home.

I got home and me and my husband and our girls ate together and then we piled up. We played Apples to Apples. My husband taught the girls how to build a house of cards and a few card tricks to astound their friends. We took temperatures to see whose was less. Our Bekah, who is usually the one sick, was doing the happy dance all day, and singing “I’m healthier than you!” every time the thermometer revealed that her temp was actually lower than our Shelby’s.

Then we piled up one last time to watch “The Bible”

My husband and I cried all the way through it…

It never ceases to amaze me that God would choose to save the likes of us. I look at the depths of our depravity, the callousness of our cruelty, the ability of our abusiveness toward one another… and I cannot fathom why He would see any reason to not just leave us to ourselves to destroy one another.

Why on earth would He want to save us?

How on earth can He look at us with such love?

Yet He did. ON EARTH. On earth, not from a distant heaven, but on earth… up close and personal, He still looked at us with oh so great love.

I want to meet Simon of Cyrene.

I want to meet the man who was able to see into the eyes of our Savior as He went to the hill that would display His death. I want to meet the man. Oh how I do hope that He was a man who strengthened the Lord as he helped Him carry His cross. Oh how I hope he was a man that spoke kindness to the Lord and encouraged Him as the History Channel series depicted. Oh how I hope that he was a man who loved the Lord and did not curse Him as he walked so closely with Him, His blood spilling over on to him as they walked up that hill to the Lord’s death…

I remember when my sister had her wreck and the doctors gave me her blood covered jewelry and I held her blood covered hands and stroked her blood covered face and hair as I sung to her and prayed with her… hoping she could hear me. I wore her rings and I kept her blood on me. I just could not wash it off until I knew she would live.

I wonder if Simon of Cyrene felt the same way about the blood of Christ that had to cover him and his garments…

Then I watched as Mary bathed the body of her Son. I watched as Nicodemus and Joseph sang over His body… and I thought as I watched her gently wash the stains of hate and betrayal and death away from his body… this is how we are to treat His body today.

His body is the church. We the believers. We are His body. How do we treat one another? How we treat one another is how we are treating His body. Every lash into His skin was for one of us. Every blow to His back was for our sin. Every kick to His side was for our transgression. Each swing of the hammer that nailed Him to the cross was for our rebellion. Every single one.

When someone comes to Him and believes in Him… truly believes… they accept that. Then the weight of that falls on them… and when it’s real, really believed, it is so very hard to bare.

Those who believe are to take that one who has just realized the weight of it all and we are begin to care for that stripe, that blow, that kick, that hammer swing to the body. We are to begin washing them with the water of the Word… and applying healing salt to the wounds and strengthening them so that they might go and do the same to the parts of His body that they will have in their reach.

Are you caring for His body?

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

Colossians 3:12-13

He cried out “It is finished” but it wasn’t over… It was finished to begin… a brand new beginning. The old is finished but the new had just begun.