Easter 2012 | All is Well

Friday Findings

April 12, 2019 By Shelly Durkee

Friday Findings

I’m a curious soul – with a wide range of nerdy and geeky interests, ranging from space exploration to theological concepts. I often find interesting items when stumbling about on the internet – and on Friday’s I like to share my findings with you!

Denmark – Officially on my Bucket List

I have a long list of places I’d like to visit one day – and this week I’ve added Denmark, and all because of this new Forest Tower recently built and opened to the public. This stunning oak and weathered steel structure contains no stairs – only a spiral walkway that winds itself up, up, and up further still, above the tree tops. Check out this video, for more information – and add Denmark to your list!

Vending Machines – for Short Stories

I think I love this.

In London, commuters in search of a Candy Bar at the station, may be pleasantly surprised to see a different type of vending machine next to the usual soda and junk food varieties. Recently three “Short Story Vending Machines” were installed around Canary Wharf. These vending machines dispense – for FREE – very short stories for commuters to read while en route to their next stop. The hope is to encourage people to take a break from their screens, and engage their minds in a little bit of literature. So nerdy – and so cool: Short Stories to Feed Your Mind

Yet Another Productivity Tool – But People, I Really Like This One!

OK…I really like all productivity tools. I’m a bit obsessed with them.

However, the team over at Notion has really created something that – so far – seems to bring to the table what so many others have lacked. It’s a great mash-up of the best features in Evernote, Trello and To-doist. It’s robust, but not hugely complicated. The possibilities are endless! So far I’ve created pages for my daily life, my work life, long-term and short-term projects, book lists, movie lists, goals, health trackers…….

(You can clearly see, I’m a bit obsessed.)

Download Notion and give it a try!: Productivity on Steroids

New Domestic Longest Flight in USA

Recently, Hawaiian airlines announced that they have added a new route between Honolulu and……BOSTON! That’s a heck of a long flight, folks……and, officially, is the longest domestic USA flight to date: 11.5 hours.

Hawaiian Air typically has competitive pricing, so I’m curious to see what their rates will be. Plus – they serve POG on Hawaiian Air; what’s not to love about that? Fly the Friendly Skies – to the Aina

Sunday – the Day Between Death and Life

Several years ago now, I listened to a sermon that deeply impacted my life at a time when I was so gripped by despair and hopelessness. The title of the sermon was “Saturday”, and it was preached by John Ortberg. I used to have a link to the recording and would listen to it each Saturday before Easter Sunday; but that link is no longer available.

Last week, I searched for an alternate link, and came across this near transcript of the sermon. Friends – if you, too, have ever found yourself smothered by despair, please take a few minutes to read this, and gaze into the only true hope that we have: Saturday

The Space Between

April 5, 2015 By Shelly Durkee

I am nothing, if not a creature of habit.

I have my daily routine, my monthly routine (tasks I perform on the first and last days of the month), and my yearly routine (tasks I complete on days like my birthday and New Year’s Day).

The Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday has also developed its own routine as well.

It’s typically a quiet day for my crew and I. Sometimes there is a soccer game to attend, and then maybe a spring picnic or some housecleaning/yard work. Not so, this year, as everyone else in the house is having to fend for themselves while I continue to prepare for vastly key meetings for work that begin Monday morning. I sent my boy to the country market to buy us cookies this morning. For breakfast.

Yes, it’s that kind of day.

But even in the hectic-ness of this day, the loudness of the printer which is running non-stop, the noise of the game of kitchen soccer that is going on behind me, played by my boy and his friends (yes, kitchen soccer is a thing. What? You mean you don’t play it? What’s wrong with you people?), and the sound of my girl practicing violin in her room—in the midst of the cacophony of noise that is in my tiny house right now, I am keenly aware of the Silence of that Saturday, over 2000 years ago.

It is the silence that the friends of Jesus–the disciples, his mother, others–not only heard on the Saturday after His death, but felt. It was penetrating. Heavy. Palpable.

In those hours—goodness, how they must have dragged!–there was a profound nothingness. A nothingness filled with shock. Questions. Grief. Doubt, even, as evidenced by Thomas’ reactions.

Why shouldn’t they have doubted, in that silence? I would have. I do–when God seems absent. When He seems so very quiet. Why should we be shocked by the confusion they had to have felt?

Jesus was dead. Judas had betrayed, than hung himself. Peter had denied, three times. Thomas was, well, I’m not sure. But I wonder if he was angry, in his doubt. Maybe not. At the least he recognized the silence and did not–maybe could not–bring himself to join the others in their bewilderment and grief.

It has become my habit, in recent years, on this in-between Saturday, to do two things.

First, I study Thomas‘s response. I do this to remind myself that God had mercy for Thomas, and must certainly have mercy for me, too. Thomas and I are so alike.

Second, I listen to this sermon, by John Ortberg. You can click on his name, to be taken to the mp3 file and listen. It is the clearest sermon I have ever heard–the best explanation–of that time of silence on that day before the resurrection.

I can’t imagine–can’t even begin to fathom–what it must have been like for Thomas on that day. For Peter, for John, for Andrew, for Mary, for Martha, for Lazarus (was he still alive at this point? I assume so), for Bartholomew, for those whom He had healed, and for the other disciples and followers whose names I can’t recall. Because they didn’t know.

We do. We have the gift of scriptures, that point us to the hope of the resurrection. To the hope that Sunday was coming. We have the hope of assurance that what Jesus prophesied as described in Matthew 16:21–His very own death and resurrection–truly did come to pass. We live on this side of history. It is a long history, I understand that, all too well. But we have something in the gift of scriptures that we can both point backwards to as Thomas-longed-for evidence, which–in turn–points us forward to the evidence that there will come a day. A home-going day. A new heaven and earth day.

But sometimes, even if we are Christ-followers who believe in the truth of scripture, we lose sight of this. Our prayers turn into hollow echos bouncing around in our mind. God seems distant. Agonizingly Silent. We doubt–some more than others. We long–for a sense of His presence. Or for an answer to a desperate prayer for physical healing, or for the return of a wayward child. Or we sense something amiss in our souls, that we know not how to fix.

It is in those moments that we can recall the experiences of Jesus’ followers on that Saturday. Of his disciples. His friends. Even His mother. And we can remember that there was this holy pause–uncomfortable–no, that’s not quite right–more than that. Unsettling. Crushing. Mind-boggling.

A holy pause that gave way to an empty tomb, much like a dam breaks in the aftermath of a torrential storm. A crashing in of hope and salvation.

Maybe you need to be reminded of this, in this in-between space of Saturday before Sunday. As you wait. If so, please listen to Ortberg’s sermon.

And know that Sunday is coming. Even when you are in the holy lonesome echo of the silence of God.

From the Depths

April 4, 2015 By Shelly Durkee

Good Friday.

Good only because of the sacrifice that was laid upon the cross by the son of the one true God, the son who was fully God and fully man (who can comprehend?), the one who paid the necessary price for our sins.

For my sins.

I return so often to the Psalms. Not just occasionally. Several times a week. Sometimes a couple of times in one day. It’s where I find words that I can find nowhere else. It’s where I feel not as lonely. Not so alone.

So, it is interesting to me that, on this most grievous night of the most solitary of moments of solitude in those hours upon that cross, when even the Father turned His face away (who can comprehend?), that Jesus, too, turned to the depths of the Psalms.

He borrows words from Psalm 22. He cries out:

“My God! My God, Why have you forsaken me?”

And while those are the only audible words He chose to utter in those moments, the words that followed these must have been–they must have been–right there as well. In the depths of His soul:

Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

I stumbled across this set of words, written by Donald McLeod this week:

He cries out in Aramaic, but he doesn’t use the greatest of all the Aramaic words, Abba. Even in the anguish of Gethsemane, distraught and overborne though he was, he had been able to use it (Mark 14:36). But not here.

I have never seen that before. He was able to use the word “Abba” in that dark garden, while his friends slept, while He was alone–isolated, solitary–because He wasn’t alone. Abba, Father was there.

But in these moments, He hung in a dreadful suspension that no one before, or since, has every experienced, because had they (or if we) did–if we were to experience those moments of Forsakenness, it would tear our souls to shreds.

But….do not miss this….God, the creator of the universe, the almighty one, the righteous judge, does not leave His son in that state of tormented wretchedness.

How do we know this to be truth?

We know it, first and foremost, because of the resurrection.

But, we also know it because this agonized, pierced, bleeding, spit-upon, thorn-crowned man returned, again, to the depths of the Psalms in his final seconds of breathing life, before His body and soul gave way to death.

He turned to Psalm 31:5:

Into your hand I commit my spirit

But, Jesus added a twist to those words.

Not really a twist. A declaration of whose hands. A placement of His soul into the hands of the only rightful owner: Abba, His father:

Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. (Luke 23:46)

Again, Donald MacLeod frames this perfectly for us:

But then, suddenly, it is over. The sacrifice is complete, the curtain torn, and the way into the Holiest opened once and for all; and now Jesus’s joy finds expression in the words of another psalm, Psalm 31:5. In the original, it had not contained the word Abba, but Jesus inserts it: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

Do you see?

How interesting that MacLeod refers to it as an expression of joy.

But, I suppose it was. Joy.

After that terrible, horrific separation, may there not have been joy of relief that His very soul was going to His Father–maybe a glimpse, even, of His Father turning to Him to receive Him in His last breath?

Is it not unlike (though, admittedly, on a much, much smaller scale), the glimpses of joy we experience in those moments when we are certain that God is who He says He is and, not only that, but that He knows us?

And forgives us?

And loves us?

Who can comprehend?

Saturday Silence

April 19, 2014 By Shelly Durkee

We have something that the followers of Jesus did not have, the day after His death.

We know that Sunday is coming.

But they did not. All they knew was that their beloved teacher, their friend, their master, the one that was going to change everything, had died. Not only had he died, He had died a horrific death on the cross. Peter had denied Him three times. The brothers who fought over who would sit at Jesus’ right hand now knew no hope. Thomas…..well, I think Thomas was at such a loss that he didn’t even want to be with the other apostles. He wanted to be alone. And they all mourned. And were confused. And frightened. And………

When God is silent, and when hope is not on the horizon, what does one do? What other choice is there but to wait? When the silence is so profound, so palpable, so real, it is painful. It is disturbing and frightening. Even for those of us that know that Sunday is coming. That our Jesus rose from the dead. That He is alive!!! That the resurrection is truth! Even we who live on this side of the resurrection experience moments of silence from God, and despair. But we are not without hope, because we know that He who rose that Resurrection Sunday sees and knows even when the silence from heaven is deafening.

I once heard a sermon by John Ortburg that addressed this exact thing. It had a huge impact on me, and I return to it periodically to remind myself that the wait is hard, but God is good and loves me even through the silence and waiting. It’s simply titled “Saturday”, addressing the day between the death and the resurrection. Powerful sermon, hope-giving words. You can listen to it by clicking HERE.

I also came across this moving song and video tonight by Andrew Peterson. It expresses much better some of what I am trying to say here on this Saturday before Easter Sunday.

May you go to bed tonight and sleep peacefully, with the hope and the knowledge that our Jesus did not stay in the grave, that Resurrection Sunday is coming!