in spite of all cruel odds

I feel pretty bad for the prophet Jeremiah. Christians cite the call of Jeremiah often because it sounds so poetic and meaningful: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..." The only problem is that Jeremiah's life pretty much sucked; by the time we're twenty chapters into the book, he's cursing God and wishing he'd never have been born. This is a prophet of the Lord speaking.

The Christian life is hard. It's not the easy thing many of us are taught it is when we're children. I think what makes it so complicated is that it's hard for reasons we don't expect. You might hear warnings about persecution or having people mock your beliefs, but unfortunately, in my experience, I've gotten that a lot more of that from fellow Christians than from non-believers or adherents of other faiths. When I think about Jeremiah, I realize that if I'm really following God, I may be walking down a very lonely road.

Perhaps Black Saturday (that being today, the awkward in-between after Good Friday and before Easter Sunday) is the biggest sign of that: the son of God doesn't come as a conquering hero, but as a common man who ends up killed. Who would have written that script?

To end my lenten posts, I'm sharing one more of my songs. It's pretty long, but this is actually the abbreviated version (iMovie wouldn't let me make a file longer than ten minutes). I was heavily inspired both by the story of Jeremiah and by my favorite theology book: No Handle on the Cross by Kosuke Koyama. Koyama argues that we try to make the cross easy to carry, attaching a handle to it so we can carry it like a briefcase. That's not the lifestyle Jesus models at all. But in the end, God remains faithful, even when it seems like we've been forsaken.