June 20, 2022

God, I am so tired of thinking I am bigger than You, and my ability to mess things up is bigger than You. That is a lie and I am choking in its grip. Please show me how big You are. Please, uproot the lie. Show me how small I am. I cling to Your feet. I don’t need You to be what I think You are. Lord, please make me willing to be inhabited by Your Spirit and to release control. The story of Jacob’s wrestle in the night comes to mind. (see Genesis 32:24-30)

I’m asking for a miracle. I’m asking because I know that thinking I’m bigger than You is a fabrication. A sleight of hand. Please take me out from under the spell. Show me how the trick works so that I am no longer captured by it. Take me back to the garden, to the lie, and reverse the damage. You have crushed the serpent’s head, and along with it crushed the lie that You are holding out on me; that You have limited me and excluded me from Your fullness. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” You say.

I’m so sorry that we wanted “to know good and evil.” I am drawn to that tree, that struggle. You remind me of another tree, another struggle, “On a hill far away.” Lord, I receive Your death in me. I receive the silence of the tomb. It’s a long silence, really. The silence of a world in awe at what they have seen. A silence void of struggle, void of taunting, certainly void of trying. It is the moment of silence after a stunning victory before the crowd comes to life and erupts with noise and elation.

The tomb is a quiet place, a place of mystery, a place we respectfully allow darkness and silence. A place where stillness is not a practice, but the truest reality. I lie dead. I have gone from confused delirium to perfect, unruffled peace. Every muscle that was trying so hard to hold me together has now relaxed. Resurrection is not on my mind, because nothing is on my mind. That’s the beauty of being dead. The rushing is suddenly and decisively irrelevant. Not even snoring disturbs this silence. A dead person doesn’t sin, doesn’t worry, doesn’t know anything.

Lord here I am, passed out in the tomb with You, knowing nothing. I can do nothing. My senses have stopped signaling my brain. There is no input, no output. Only silence and stillness. Even breathing has ceased. I am in a holy place of waiting, a sleep of death that will feel the same whether it is one minute or one hundred years. This is the only way to wait without fretting—in death. Death is also where decay occurs—the return of life to the soil, from which new life will arise. Dust I am. This is how I know silence. Death silences the endless chatter, and it is God’s gift to me, though my heart still beats.

“I am crucified with Christ; therefore I no longer live.” (Galatians 2:20) It seems I have tried to be born again without dying. I have wanted to skip over death to resurrection, not realizing how I long for death. Quiet. No expectations. I might have known that in God’s hands even death is a gift. As I permit myself to engage with death, I find treasure: grace, humor, peace.

Nobody expects anything of a dead person. I am gloriously, peacefully dead. Dead people aren’t really good at anything, except maybe lying still. I suppose if their eyelids were open they could win any staring contest.

Also, the band name “Grateful Dead” has taken on a whole new meaning.

The nice thing about being the dead person is that there is no sense of loss. I cannot grieve, because I cannot do anything. I need not try to be still, nor try to move. I need not expect perfection, nor hope for predictability. I cannot hold onto life. It is behind me and beyond me and it animates me only when I am not in this passageway of death.

Trust. Humility. These things I have longed for are here in the tomb.

Perhaps Jesus called death “sleep” because He knew it was the only way for humans to Rest In Peace. Death is not a fitful slumber. It is the child who has fallen asleep in his mother’s arms in a waiting room, every muscle relaxed, dead to the passage of time and to the noise of a coffee machine and crying children and ringing phones.

Like Barbara Brown Tayler, I love the question, “What is saving you right now?” Death is saving me right now. Today I am in the grave. Neither crucifixion nor resurrection are on my mind. Maybe “grave circumstances” aren’t so bad. “Grave” and “grace” are closer than I thought. My tired heart has stopped beating and it lies still in the mystery of death.

Only Jesus. Always Jesus. Beautifully Jesus. Safely Jesus. I will Rest In Peace with You, the only one who can lay down Your life and take it up again.