Katie's latest post:
The alarm goes off on this Wednesday morning - the morning after the morning after the day before. It is too early, but needs must...
I am almost recovered physically from the gruelling experience of Monday (I have slept enough, eaten enough, drunk enough) and my body is nearly ready for the work in the diary.
I sit on the edge of the bed staring into the mirror (not a good place to have a mirror it occurs to me - must move it...). And now I cry for the emotional and spiritual recovery that has not caught up since Monday. We were called to be the Body of Christ, one Body with many parts working together for the glory of God (see Paul's letter to the church in Corinth), but it felt more like the very thing Paul warned them to avoid - that is, the eye saying to the hand, "I don't need you", one part saying to the other, "I don't value you". What we became was the Body of Christ, but broken. And so I wept the tears today that I held back (just) at the end of Monday's 8 hours... I was back in the debating chamber, looking around at 400 people all exhausted but for different reasons - the broken Body of Christ, wounded and scarred. Each group huddled together, separate from neighbour, some anticipating the 'adventure' of events, some frightened by the uncertainty. Where was God in all of this? What had happened to His beautiful Body, the Church?
I glance again at the mirror, and my eye drifts upwards.
I have a simple wooden cross hanging on the corner - and now I am somewhere else. I am standing in Palestine on Good Friday, looking at the body of Jesus Christ, broken, wounded and scarred... the disciples are huddled together in broken groups, no longer a band of male and females, broken and healed, faithful and questioning. But fearful and wounded themselves by events. They had no concept that Jesus' body had to be broken and go through the events of Good Friday in order for Easter Sunday to have the impact that it would.
So now I sit experiencing Holy Saturday, knowing what happened was right, but wishing it didn't hurt so much...the tears are drying on my face, and I wait in stillness for the gentle whisper of hope.
He asks, 'what happened on that Easter Sunday?'.
I think hard, trying to concentrate on what I have been asked. I re-read the end of John's Gospel in my mind's eye. A small group came to the place of endings. They found hope and life and a complete turnaround in their expectations and fears. They were sent to be messengers of that discovery. They were called to bring together those disparate, desperate, scattered people into a place of promise and healing. The Body of Christ transformed!
Jesus - your Kingdom come, your will be done here on earth exactly as you do things in heaven.
(on behalf of Katie...) Alastair Cutting, GS101
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