Tag: folding

I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the fallen leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall–the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
~Christina Rossetti from “A Better Resurrection”

It dawned on me that perhaps the first thing the risen Lord did after he defeated death, as his heart once again began to beat, was to fold his grave clothes.

This seemed to me to be good news for laundry doers everywhere—and especially to moms who probably still carry out the bulk of this mundane chore.

The risen Christ folded his laundry.

I suppose the angels could have done it but angels probably don’t have much experience with laundry.
~Doug Basler from “The Poetry of a Pastor” from Ekstasis Magazine

<Peter> saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 
John 20: 6-7

I remember panicking as a child when my mother would help me take off a sweatshirt with a particularly tight neck opening, as my head would get “stuck” momentarily until she could free me. It caused an intense feeling of being unable to breathe or see – literally being shrouded. I was trapped and held captive by something as innocuous as a piece of cloth, but the panic was real. That same feeling still overwhelms me at times when I find myself stuck in my mistakes and sins, anxious and struggling to get free.

My impulse, once free of what smothers me, is to toss it as far away from me as possible. I want to be rid of it and never touch it again.
I certainly don’t take time to fold it up for all to see.

Jesus took the time to carefully fold His facial death cloth and leave it where all who entered the tomb would recognize it as proof that His body wasn’t stolen. He had risen, leaving a clear message that all was in good order, as He said it would be.

So I now find folding laundry more meaningful, not as mundane – a reminder that a tidy and empty tomb is something to celebrate: new life quickens like spring sap rising from a fallen leaf. 

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”