The Care and Keeping of a Donkey

All of the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I hear someone say, "all the details will just work themselves out!" All administrators around the world gasp for air. Every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings. Every time the details, "just work themselves out" the creatives are in charge :)   Truth? The details DO NOT just work themselves out. We are getting ready to attend our favorite conference ever through CCEF, and each time we go I feel inclined to find the conference director and hug him/her and buy them a stiff drink. Oh, the details. Seriously, go find yourself an administrator and hug them. They need it, trust me.

One of the many things I find totally irresistible about my husband, is his uncanny awareness of the details. Simultaneously, it's the one characteristic in him that sometimes just needs to die. :)

I've been tromping through Elyse Fitzpatrick's, "Found In Him" and I think everyone should stop right now and go buy it. It is so divine! Elyse just happens to be one of the main speakers at the conference we are going to, and YES... I'm so going to stalk her! Part of our chapter this week was studying through the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. I was so mesmerized by this part:
"Jesus tells his disciples, 'Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me.' "

This is SO like my Jesus. His sweet attention to the details. Not because He is a control freak and likes to micro-manage, (like so many administrators we encounter), but because He loves the smallest and most intimate details of His creation.

"Untie THEM and bring THEM to me!"

Ah-ha, the details. He already knows that the donkey will have a colt, and He wants BOTH of them to brought to Him. Elyse states, "Jesus is so gentle that he won't even separate the little colt from his mother!"

Our Creators distinct attention to detail, can be traced throughout ALL of scripture, and throughout ALL of creation. Even if you do an elementary survey of the human body, you cannot deny the absolute perfection in the INVOLUNTARY details of our bodies. Systems that just do what they were designed to do without us even knowing it. Detailed much? Uh, HECK YEAH!

The often cold, angry, aloof Sunday school portrayal of Jesus, that has been ingrained in so many, depicts a God that is too busy and perfect for us. A God that is is too grand to care about the very ebb and flow of our daily lives. A God that only uses dogmatic, pious, heroes in His story. NOTHING could be further from the truth. He delighted in the particular care and keeping of an ass, how MUCH more than do you think He cares for YOU?!

Somebody give me an AMEN!!!

For real, are you hearing me?!!! He cares FOR YOU! No, no, no, scratch that, He is so deeply, scandalously, uncomfortably, (bordering on creeper) IN LOVE WITH YOU! And while His birth, death and resurrection are an incredible expression of His love for you, the very life He lived EVERYDAY for 33 years is just as an important expression of His love. He did the details for 33 years. For 33 years, He embraced the nastiness of this dirty planet, He adopted a totally confining human body for 33 years, so that everyday you could wake up and marvel in the detail of His indescribable love for you.  It wasn't enough to just create us with amazing detail, it wasn't enough to describe to us His unchanging love for us through the very detailed stories of the Old Testament, but He became "created" and bore the very flesh of mankind, so that no detail of our experiences could escape His ability to know us, empathize with us, and love us with a crazy love.

I don't know if your hurt needs healing today.
I don't know if you are the walking wounded amongst a group of misfits, (like me).
I don't know if you feel unloved, unworthy, under valued, and alone....
But please take this really important detail to heart, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
You are the very apple of His eye.
The very detail He is running after!

I mean, come on?!! That makes for a fantastic start to a Friday!!

~Sara