The image flashes like lightning across the black backdrop of my mind, so startingly unexpected, so jarringly raw and violent.
I am sitting third pew from the front, the world outside black and star-studded, this place hushed and still. Softly, piano notes lead my heart into the music’s unspoken words. Inside of me, us, the broken ones gathered here, there is a simple, soundless knowing of the words:
Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
It is a hallowed, pregnant moment, the loaf before us broken open, exposed, the cup full of dark, scarlet wine. We are waiting to partake, wordlessly embracing reality, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
And then this shot of light, color, image. I jolt. A misplaced image, a lost one, flashing up here, wrong time, grossly wrong mental file, triggered by the words snow and blood.
It was a National Geographic clip from earlier in the week, a component of our studies on walruses. A thousand pound polar bear, solitary and prowling for relief from gnawing hunger, lashes into the frigid arctic water. His teeth tear into flesh, and his neck muscles, unyielding and taut, strains to haul out tons of warm, pulsing, muscle. The walrus, with tusks nearly three feet long, lunges his ivory swords. A frenzied wrestle for life explodes on the pristine ice floes.
And that is the scene that rips into this tranquil Sunday night communion: clean white snow splattered with hot, salty blood. Expanse of unmarred purity saturated with gushing red. Then, sitting before the screen, I had averted my eyes from the gruesome struggle, repulsed by the brutal life-death dance. Tonight I feel violated, sullied, by its intrusion. But I can’t shake it.
Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
Can it be that I wear unpolluted, spotless white? No, that’s not it. It is more than simply being clothed in purity. I am made snow, my very essence rapturously transfigured. “Behold I make all things new.” He makes me, the likes of me, new, pristine. Freshly fallen white snow.
But only because His blood sprayed like a fount, spilled down, pooled.
I am white only because He bled red.
A prayer of thanksgiving, offered for the cup, releases me from the bloody snow mess splattered across my mind’s mural. The communion drink is passed, one white hand to another. I take to my lips. It slides down, hot and alive. Like a blood transfusion. His life-blood now courses through my dead, withering veins, revives my stone-cold heart.
We are born stillborn. Limp and lifeless, looking as though we might wake at any moment. Yet we can’t. We are impotent to. Our first birth is a death birth.
And He can’t bear it. He can’t suffer it, tolerate it, endure it. His love drives Him to do the wildly unfathomable: He lets the metal pierce into him. He drains himself of His blood, drop after wet drop, and revives us. If we let Him. He bleeds, so we might breathe. Born again.
Do I know it? I was once dead, stiff and decaying. And then, because of the spraying of blood, I resuscitate. I am Lazarus: really, wholly dead. Stinketh.
And now, I am alive. Come forth, Lazarus! Because of that precious scarlet flow, I may be the fragrance of Christ. Animated, alert, awake, spirited, vigorous, vivacious—ALIVE!
Now, every day after my incomprehensible resurrection, is gift, a permanent, forever holiday from death. Today, a holy day from death. Everyday, now: holy days. We are the resuscitated ones!
Peace is that gentle rain that falls when you come to the place where Jesus is enough. Joy is that rapturous whirl what transports you to the place where Jesus is too much.
And isn’t He?
Scripture Drink: “When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross!” Col. 2:13
See Windows to My Soul for more pieces in this week’s Carnival of Beauty’s theme reflecting on the Beauty of Joy.
(Answer to the Question still to follow…)
