Thoughts of Holy Week

Let's start with a prayer: Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake endured temtation and suffering. Amen

Well here I am again pouring out my mind in what I like to think of as my personal pensive. I am getting that from story that I won't name in case it is offensive to someone.
Someone gave me a cd set on a lenten journey but I could only get one to play so I haven't been able to unlock the secreats of the others yet. Someone else gave me a transcrpt of a lenten mission that they went to at their church and I read that and found it very enlightening, but the thing that has got my juices really flowing is what my biblical instructor told us at class last tuesday night. That is what I am thinking about now. We have been studing Ephesians and chapter 5 verse 21 is one of the most controversal because it tells us to be submissive to our husbands but a better translation would be to be subordinate. My instructor told us that Paul was speaking in some what military terms. In the sevice you have a chain of comand. This is necessary because without it there would be choas. So we also have in the church a chain of comand because that is the way Christ set it up and serves to keep us from choas. I know that a lot of us don't understand why this has to be but that is a topic for another time. Getting back to Paul, what was so exciting was the fact that he goes on to tell us that we are fighting a spiritual battle and we need to be united to win it hense the military lingo. The subordinate part is crucial because we as married people are representives of the model of Christ and the church. You have the model of Christ being the head of the chruch the church being the body right so we in marriage model this with the husband being like Christ at the head and the wife and children being the body. Actually this is a very beautiful image if one can drop the ego and see it the way God intended. The next part is so profound and beautiful that I think that if we really understood it from the beginning of our realationships we would enter marriage with a whole new outlook and our marriages would not end in divorce. Paul tells the husband to love his wife he is a model for Christ's love for the church then he tells the wife to let the husband love her. That's right by telling us to be subordinate he is really telling us to let the husband love us. Think about it. If we are always trying to be equals or being over baring and wanting control we are not allowing our spouses to love us they way that Christ is telling them too. The same is true with our relationship to the church if we are always fighting it always demanding to have our own way we are not allowing Christ to come to us because we are saying not now God not till you fix what I think is wrong with "The Church" then maybe we can talk about it once I have things the way I want them. We divorce ourselves from God in much the same way that we divorce ourselves from each other. Husband and wife, friend to friend, parent to child. Whatever our relationship we refuse to become the subordinate. When in reality if we become the subordinate and let the chain of comand happen we are free to be who God intended. And if we return the love that we are given measure for measure we start to understand the power of God's love for us. Now we are all human and not one of us is perfect but we can try to be just as the saints before us tried. It is in the struggle that we learn what to discard and what to hold dear.
My husband was one of those men that thought the world revolved around him. He was brought up that way so I expected it but not to the dregree that I experienced it. I spent a lot of time and energy tring to live up to his unreal expatations and you can imagen that their was a lot of conflict. I am speaking of this in past tense because over the last year he has had more than one revelation that has improved the quality of life for all of us me especially. Praise God! It isn't easy over coming your faimly of origin's behavior pattern even when you know that it is seriously flawed. It happened generations ago and no one even is aware of it because it is so ingrained in their make-up. That is the way it is with a lot of us becuase we never really understood the original plan that God had for us and having all the different religions only muddling things up doesn't help either.

I did not post this when I wrote it and I think that is because it goes so well with what I am trying to say today Wednesday, August 30 2006. So I am going to just put it out there as it is. Here goes