I go to prepare a place for you

Until that which we write, we think, we pray, comes to life, we are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. This is the pre-Easter world, the pre-Easter us.

• Messy.
• Analytical.
• Critical.
• Judging.
• Halting.
• Hesitant.
• Conspiring.
• Underhanded.
• Plotting.
• Deceiving.

Oh, the list. Thank God, the baby Jesus was born into a smelly stable. At least He knew what He was getting himself into, or at least He recognized the stench when he got here.

But the Easter life is meant to have a different fragrance. Gone is the stench of death. Up rises the sweet smell of life. It doesn’t febreeze the smell to muffle it or fool our noses by covering it, it actually replaces it by rebirthing it. It is a coming alive “in me.” It’s an inhabitation, not just a living with, or walking beside. It’s not even a co-habitation. Life has sprung from that which was clearly dying, what others have seen and testified to as completely dead. The mortician has actually signed off on it.

That, of course, is impossible. So, are we foolish to believe it?

Yet, each day I have words, thoughts, prayers in me that are meant to be acted upon. Ideas designed to take root. Connections clearly intended to be made. And when I am true to these, they take on a life of their own. This is not my doing. Others tell me this. Am I foolish to believe this? believe them? That something could be incarnated in me? A life that is not mine and yet it is?

Impossible. Yet, I hear (and so I write): Make a place for me, just as I have gone to make a place for you. What if the place Jesus said he was “going to make for me” was actually in me?

Is there a place “in me” that would welcome my Lord? Have I prepared the guest room? Made the beds, changed the sheets, tidied up the newspapers? Have I scrubbed the floors, painted the shutters, patched the wall paper, vacuumed the… Heck, I’d better get busy. Maybe a decorator.

No, redecoration would be fruitless and a waste of time, energy and resources. Christ doesn’t come with the white glove test to see if I pass muster. He’s not that kind of commander. He comes to set up a base of operations. He seeks outposts where his commands are followed without hesitation or pause. Not because we fear His power or rank but because we defer to it. Our compliance is a place of usefulness, of actualization.

This is a real place in Easter people. Where the Kingdom has come, the knock answered, the door opened, and new life has been welcomed and told to make itself at home. Oh, what a hum and whir I hear from that place.

What is written there is life-giving.

What is thought there is laid in place.

What is prayed there is and was and ever will be.

But what is imagined there…Oh, the plans he has for us; to prosper us and give us a future. Where better to do all of this than within us? Am I foolish to believe that the place He left to prepare was that very place?