Easter 2016 is my third as a blogger.  2014 was Oh Happy Day and 2015 was Black patent shoes.  This year, Easter was a new experience for me.

This is my favourite week, every year.  The one just finished.   We are about to turn the lights out on this one and move through the dark into tomorrow and

a new week.  The second week of Spring.

Since, well, forever, I have loved Spring.

There’s hope in tiny stems of green growing up through soil.  The sun is just a little higher in the sky  and there are signs of new life everywhere.  My very warmest jacket has been replaced with the lighter warm jacket, dinner is served while the sun is still shining through the kitchen windows and the smell.  Even the rain is welcome now.

I walked this afternoon with my girl and we breathed the fresh air while our feet took us through neighbourhoods and under branches hanging bare and waiting

for the kiss of sun and maybe a touch of warmth, soon.  They know when it’s time to sprout buds that turn into leaves that become a green canopy over our heads.  So much new and fresh and I love that we commemorate, celebrate Jesus death and His resurrection He is risen in Spring.

The newness in nature, is a bigger than life reminder of the newness come because of Jesus and His sacrifice.  I cry easy as a rule and when spring comes and Easter, and I think about the cross and the sacrifice and the Love and the Mercy and the Grace and the reason for all of it,

my sin

it’s just alot and right here in my kitchen, I feel them, the tears, behind my eyelids and then on my face.  For me!  Because He thinks I’m worth it, God came.  It blows my mind into little bits but not often enough.  His Love, His only son

For Me

And this year it’s different.  This year there’s more.  There can always be more.  Just when you think you know it all, Get it, all,

you don’t.

My first born child, my son, will be 32, in just under two months and how can that have happened?   It was this week past, this first week of spring, this Holy week, that I looked at life just a little differently.  Good Friday was a few days away and Sunday just beyond and this guy, our boy had sent me a message a month ago to say he was getting baptized on March 27th and I had answered him immediately to tell him I was thrilled, thankful and proud and then he said “I want to be obedient to the Lord” and my heart near burst for thankfulness.  I realized the day would be Easter Sunday and sitting wherever it was that I sat, the tears threatened.   Baptism is a big deal.  It is the outward witness, testimony, to the work God has done on the inside, in the heart and not only that.  It is a symbol, a going down to death and rising again to new life.  Jesus died and rose again and baptism is the telling, of our change from old and sinful to new and forgiven.  A personal decision and it’s obedience, to God.   I have prayed

often and fervently, for this boy man.  Through these many years I have reminded God of His promise to honour obedience with blessing, reminded Him of His promise to redeem and make new and stand close and hold tight.

I reminded Him that He said

and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” Psalm 50:15

And I told Him the glory was surely His and would not be forgotten.

There’s this book with my words to God, calling out to Him.  There’s a page way back and I asked that this boy would bow his knee and seek after God and His righteousness.  That he would be obedient and a witness to God’s faithfulness and today is the day that the “and please Father, bring Him to a place where His desire to obey you outweighs His fear of standing before your created ones, in a tank full of water,” is answered.  He was baptized and spoke clearly and his words were beautiful and He read to us from Psalm 139

“where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?”

and the more 

I was telling you about is this.

My boy is about to begin his 33rd year.  Jesus was in His 33rd year when He, perfect and spotless, went to the cross, God’s only son.  My son is not spotless, nor is he perfect.  He knows life is full of all sorts of curves and treacherous passes.  I am confident that he will not hang on a cross before his 34th birthday but I looked at him today and saw a young man willing to do a hard thing.  He went down into the water and came up again to cheering and woo-hooing and clapping and rejoicing and he smiled and was thankful he had done what he did and thankful that God had done what He did.  I watched, tissue in hand and saw my beautiful boy, living his life with so much of it ahead, doing this thing that the Father had instructed him to do.  Obedient.  My knees will continue to hit the floor on his behalf and I will pray without ceasing that God will work it out, all of it, that He has planned, for Tim’s  good and God’s Glory.  We know that we don’t know  how long we will live, or what’s coming next.  He is learning that obedience is better than sacrifice

And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. 1 Samuel 15:22

And while I thought this week, about today and when I saw it all happen, today, the boy and the water and the reading of his story, I thought of that other young man, the same age as mine, who walked ahead, steady on, without faltering, to the beating and mocking and the scourging and the blood and the anguish and

I thought of His mother and her broken heart.  She knew he did not belong to her.  He was the Son of God, come for a purpose and her heart must have been broken into bits.

God came

here and His name was Jesus and He Loved and died and rose from the dead and that young man, Jesus,

God

is alive and He is coming back.  The young man in the tank of water today, knows that.  He understands the sacrifice made for him and he’s thankful.

I’m his mother and God’s gift to me this Holy week was to see His Son, my saviour, just a little differently

and I’m going to sleep now, to rest

knowing full well that my prayers for the son of mine who went to the water, are heard by the Son of God, who knew no sin yet became sin for us.

One prayer answered and the list stays long and keeps me on my knees.