1 Partridge In Ye Old Pear Tree

           This past weekend I got to spend a delightful weekend with dear friends in Tennessee. Since the poster event was a costume 40's Noir LARP party, we spent that Saturday morning laughing over costumes, walking around in each other's high heels, trying on ridiculous hats and clip-on earrings, doing each other's hair, experimenting with Russian, British, and New England accents, and generally having a hilariously good time. You know what it's like when you're so engaged in the moment, and having so much good, honest, simple fun that you are no longer thinking about living, you're just doing it.

Time doesn't exist. Pain, problems, and perdition have become void. You're functioning no longer from one moment to the next, you simply are. 

I wonder if that's part of what God means when He calls Himself the "I AM." He is perfectly sufficient, satisfied, and serene. If anybody knows best how to just be, it is God Himself. There is no worry, wondering, or want with God. How else can you put it except to simply say that He just is?

        When we are living life in all its fullness, and in an immersed state of rejoicing, I wonder if that is when we are most like God and experiencing just a taste of what heaven will be like. We are commanded to rejoice so much in the Scriptures. It would require no stretch of the imagination to believe that we were made for rejoicing. 

        The best part of it all is that the one thing that could and should keep us from rejoicing, our sin, has been taken out of the way by the death and resurrection of our glorious Savior! Friends, this day, of all the days in the year should be one of the most joyful for that reason alone. We have no more cause to mourn in the fullest sense of the word. Yes, on this earth there will be reason to grieve, but ultimately the believer's grief must always give place to an even greater joy.

 We can sing those lines from the Sussex carol confidently: