One evening, many years ago, while I was at a high school youth group, the teacher taught us something using an object lesson. She took a glass jar, some big rocks, some tiny pebbles, some sand and some water. And she put them in the jar in a variety of orders. The first may have been water, then, sand, then little pebbles, then, big rocks. They did not fit. Then she rearranged the order a little, and of course, they didn’t fit again. But finally, she put the big rocks in, then the little pebbles, then the sand, and finally the water. It all fit. The lesson was about priorities. And almost 30 years later, I can still envision that glass jar with all those things in it and think about my own life and whether the priorities in my life are right.
When I teach my own students, I love to find a good object lesson. Maybe because of my own pleasure in them. When we are teaching our students about reconciliation and sin, I use a mirror and a picture frame with a picture of Jesus, and students get to come up and squirt shaving cream on the glass. We talk about how sin is like that shaving cream, and it blocks us from seeing Jesus, and from seeing ourselves as we really are. And the gift of confession takes the frame and the mirror and makes them perfectly clean in a way that we could never do on our own.
In the same way we have this amazing celebration today of Jesus being raised from the dead to give us the opportunity to be washed of our sins. Yet this day often passes with more time spent filling Easter eggs and making dinner than in thinking about this miracle.
Seeing as God knows my love of object lessons, He helped me understand this mystery in a new way. The other day, I was really trying to seek out some answers from God and got radio silence. I knew He was still there, but I had no more clarity. As I was driving, I was waiting at a light in the turn lane, and my blinker was on. It was an especially long light, and after a few minutes, my blinker still blinked, but the sound turned off. I had never noticed this, and I wondered why this was. Another minute later, the sound came back on, and I heard it. Somehow, the silence allowed me to hear the tick again.
We have just come out of Ordinary time, and now the blinker has turned on as we celebrate Easter. Unfortunately, we might miss the message of love that Jesus has for us today. But we have the chance to hear and see things anew as we look upon our God who loved us so much to come down and live life as we do, with our pains and sorrows. May we take time this day to sit in the quiet and listen for this God who loves us so much. May we seek not the answers to our questions, but the Giver of the answer to find the One our heart truly desires. Happy Easter!!
Kasey Jordan is a former missionary and lives in Monticello.
