Monday, April 9, 2012

Agnes Laughs--A Resurrection Experience

Agnes laughs. She’s 94 years old and she laughs—all the time this lady laughs! I first met her in a training event at Calvary church during our first Leadership Summit. She laughed—if felt like she jumped—at me so hard that it startled me. I got a pretty cool adrenaline rush from it all. She laughed so hard at startling me that she doubled over. She laughs. Why? She delights in God. Seriously, this old lady loves Jesus. She laughs because of Jesus. Not the religious Jesus with the wimpy fair skin and the flowing brown hair and blue Scandinavian eyes but the Jesus that the Gospels talks about. That Jesus and his sacrifice for our sins has so captured Agne’s heart that she laughs. The playful side of the work of Christ on our behalf makes her laugh. The joy of the resurrection life makes her laugh.

Of course, the other side of that whole business is what theologians call the atonement. It is serious. God’s love for us cost him dearly. It wasn’t this sort of sentimental love found in refrigerator magnet theology. The eternal God lost, for a time, the infinite intimacy he’d had among the three members of this Triune community of One. While Christ hung on the cross for our sin, things got dark. God the Father turned his back on God the Son. That’s serious! But the other side of the coin is playful. God, in Christ, invites us into the joy and delight of this Triune being because of the cross (John 17:22-23).

Agnes has it figured out. She laughs—hard and long and loud. She says, “I can’t hear so well!” Then she laughs. No kidding!! I want to be like Agnes when I grow up. I want to laugh and because of the serious work of the cross I can!! C.S. Lewis, in his book The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia series puts it like this, “There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious.” Get serious and laugh. Its resurrection day!

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