Worked-up

Dear Eugene,

Yesterday after work I climbed up my garden shack to fix its leaky roof.  As expected there was an entire ecosystem going on there, colonies of moss that really were quite a sight to behold, if only I had time to take in the meaning before displacing the decades-old civilization.

I was racing against the sun, which, according to the weatherman, is not going to show itself again until resurrection time.

I've never given so much of myself while kneeling down.

It's different from garden work.  Maybe it's the broken asphalt shingles pressing against my knee caps; maybe it's the weird angles at which I wielded my tools; maybe it's the latent anxiety that I might drop from a height that could leave me worse than dead.  By the end of the night I was prostrating along the roof edge to finish the work, couldn't kneel any more.  That posture of worship gave me much comfort; for a while I could actually feel the spring breeze that has been there all along.

I couldn't fall asleep when I finally hit my bed.  I was too "worked-up tired."  My entire being was short-circuited.

I wonder if Jesus has ever lost any sleep during his earthly years.  He must have.  He didn't even have a good place to lay his head.  And his fishermen friends stank from head to toe.

A bad night of sleep ruins the day(s) to come.  It changes how you see things.  It is one of the more powerfully intimate reminders of how things on earth are out-of-whack, not the way they should be.  How we are so close to home, to rest, but still so far away.

How much more intense the violence Jesus must have endured during his sleepless nights, dwelling where heaven touches earth, both exhilarated and agonized by what the Father is about to do through him.

He must have been "worked-up tired" all the time.

Working together in his name, Alex

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