With the “Son”shining, I completed my Pennsylvania book tour in Quakertown and Doylestown. Former neighbors and friends stopped by to say hello and have their book signed. Customers viewed my book table, wished me luck, and several purchased a copy of My Resurrected Heart: A Codependent’s Journey to Healing.
Two days later, Monday of Holy Week and the evening of Passover, I navigated the bridge over the Delaware River into New Jersey. I was on my way to meet with adolescent girls in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. Invited by their spiritual counselor, I went to discuss codependency issues from my devotional, My Resurrected Heart. Some of the girls were open to my visit while others cautiously observed this stranger in their home. One thing these courageous gals did share was their daily struggle to overcome the life-destroying plague called addiction. A young client gleefully volunteered to read from day three of my book and admitted, “Three is my favorite number.” This was an appropriate choice for Holy Week since day one through eight in my forty-day journal deals with the preparation, death, and burial of Jesus.
Without warning, a young girl jumped from the sofa and said, “It sounds like the movie, The Passion.” Another woman expressed her aha! moment. “When I was growing up we didn’t celebrate Easter, but the story is starting to come together now.”
Time did not permit us to talk about the Passover. If it had, I would have reminded them that the blood of a sacrificial lamb that protected the Israelites also covers them. God led Moses and his people from the bondage of slavery. He delivered me from my compulsive controlling. And if the girls in a New Jersey rehab trust God, He will lead them from the dead-end life of addiction to a healthy future with Him.
Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. . . . God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God (1 Peter 1:18-21MSG).
