Some of the authors of the Bible used a writing technique called chiasm. It’s where the outside statements work in parallel to each other, coming together and pointing to the center statement as the crux of it all. Like a cross. A1, B1, C1, D, C2, B2, A2.

Or sometimes the middle will be two statements reflecting each other (a D1 or D2).

I like writing techniques.

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I couldn’t sleep the other night, so I started thinking about the cruise Chris and I are going to take. Then I started thinking what if I fall off the side, and what if I’m saved but in the process am knocked unconscious and have amnesia.

Wouldn’t that be fun? If you have amnesia, you get to live each moment brand new. You wouldn’t know who to hold a grudge against, which regret to mourn, which foods you didn’t like.

But then I thought, no, I’d forget the good things like how much I love my husband’s arms around me, or how to dance, or I’d forget to have my afternoon tea. Wouldn’t it be much more fun to live as if I had amnesia with the bad stuff and a grudge’s memory with the good stuff?

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We’ve had squirrels in our attic for a long, long time. Chris fills holes he finds where they sneak in. He sets up humane traps with all sorts of fun foods like popcorn with maple syrup. And I pray that God will guide the squrrel into the trap so that the squirrel won’t die but can be set free. But two weeks later, the trap is empty and noises fill the world above our heads. How could they be surviving with no food or water? Then we found a new hole.

One night, I braced myself for the squirrels to come crashing through our ceiling above our bed. They were nesting, I think.

Chris saw one once when he was checking the trap. They startled each other.

Chris keeps filling the holes, but they keep making new ones.

I think the squirrels are winning.

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My church put together a devotional to go with the Lenten readings. Last Wednesday, we read Mark :29-45 where Jesus heals people like crazy–disease, demon-possession, handicaps. Everywhere he goes they follow. Just when he builds a congregation, he leaves for the next place. It’s a mad Billy Graham crusade. And then Jesus goes off in a monastic corner to pray. The commentary says:

• "It appears Jesus could learn a thing or two about church growth. At a time of growing crowds and highly effective ministry, Jesus disappears. Rather than pressing forward with a building campaign or organizing small groups or making His sermons available on the Internet, Jesus seeks out solitude to pray."

That stuck with me.

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Jesus told us to live in community with each other. Communities are messy. They mean mud tracked on your carpet, a glass bowl smashed, a hand printed on your wall.

But that can be lovely too.

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I get in musical moods. Last week, I was in an 80s mood: Depeche Mode, Erasure, The Clash, The Cure, Guns N Roses, Poison. So I created a youtube playlist. 80s Rock Bands. Every so often, I’d click over to watch a snippet of the video. Guns N Roses had videos from their early days to present. It made me wonder, when did they get old?

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Did you know that in Greek stauros means "cross" and staurao (with a long o at the last) means "to crucify"? Stauros for the Christians than came to mean specifically the cross of Jesus Christ and then "the suffering/death which believers endure in following the crucified Lord," which means that staurao meant not only "to fasten to a cross, or crucify" but also "destroy through connection with the crucifixion of Christ." As in, our passion for worldly things has been crucified (Romans 7:2). Someone wrote in my Greek lexicon, "the believer who is inseparably united to the Lord has died on the cross to the kind of life that belongs to this world" (c.f. Galatians 6:14).