Have you ever thought of Jesus hanging from the cross as playful? My six year old son has. When Andrew was four, he quietly and intently drew a picture as he sat at the kitchen table. When I asked him what he drew, he said, “Jesus, hanging on the cross.” It took me a minute, as I glanced at the pencil drawing before me, to make it out. There was clearly a cross in the center of the paper, then I saw a figure hanging upside down from the left side of the cross. As if Jesus was hanging upside down on a monkey bar. His legs slung over the wooden bar, swinging, with a smile on his face.  Jesus has a lot to teach us about pain; how it is part of birth, of being human. Never did he promise us that being close to God means things are always easy, happy and going our way. He also taught us to be joyful, to be playful, to have the courage to be ourselves. Sometimes I think it is easier for us to live from a painful place.It’s familiar. I can set up camp in suffering. It is one thing to pass through the landscape of pain,  through suffering,  through joy, and to move as life moves, from our center. But some of us, many of us like to set up camp in certain familiar emotional landscapes. It seems unnatural that we would pitch a tent in our pain. We run the stories of our lives over and over in an endless cycle that can make us lifetime residents of our sufferings. Jesus was the one who asked the question, Do you want to be healed? Do I? Sometimes I don’t know. It feels scary to enter new lands.

Back to Jesus swinging on the monkey bars. Play might be a ticket to reclaiming the natural movement of our lives.I know for sure it is not in our minds, alone. We can wreak havoc there. One evening recently, our children asked my husband and I to play hide and seek. I thought I had many other important things to do, like I don’t know, worry about if we will have enough money or time in our lives. I needed a break from my mental burdens, so I laid them down. And my husband and I found ourselves standing in the bathtub, huddled together, snickering as we heard our children looking for us. The anticipation of them ripping back the shower curtain and finding us, was almost too much to take. And when they did, we all screamed and laughed until our bellies hurt.

I hadn’t thought about anything else while I was standing there in that bathtub. I was completely in the moment. That’s where God is; rolling around, right in the thick of the moment. We miss it when we want to set up camp in any part of our lives. Movement is natural. Just like swinging on the monkey bars.