Easter Changes Everything
It’s amazing, really, how one single event (or at least one single culminating event) can forever change the course of history. And not just history; it can also forever change a single life. My life, in fact…and, I hope, yours. How can this be true, you ask?
Because Jesus died on the cross and rose again three days later, all of our relationships have changed!
The point of Easter was for God to change the world.
We can talk to God directly; no more veils or earthly intercessors.
The blood of Jesus gives us leave to enter the throne room of Heaven.
We can join together regardless of race or class or culture into the unified body of the church.
And it is an eternal family. My friends will have to listen to my questions literally forever!
We are no longer slaves to sin, but dead to it!
Praise Jesus, who conquered death so that we might benefit. Oh death, where is thy sting?
And best of all, we believers are even now alive in Christ.
How should we then live?
Heady stuff indeed. Happy Easter to all. May we never forget that Jesus’ death and resurrection has made us free to live, free to love, and free to experience the real joy of purpose. God is good. I picked the last half of Philippians chapter 3 as my favorite Easter passage this year because in it, Paul describes the life we should be living, now that we are indeed alive in the blood of Jesus.
“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him,
not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection
and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;
in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect,
but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do:
forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
~Philippians 3:7-14
Happy Easter!
Watching the Sunset
Out in the desert, that last hour between day and night can be really spectacular. Some things are just so beautiful that you have to try and catch them on paper, even though you know that you’ll never get it quite right. This is my feeble attempt.
The sunset sets the long red-brown desert on fire. Massive purple clouds drift and layer, reflecting deep rose-gold colors in their underbellies, as if they’ve been dipped in the molten, dripping sun. Darkness begins closing at the edges of the sky, turning the far-off lavender mountains to shady shapes and eating up the blue-and-cream streaked expanse.
The clouds deepen as the sun sinks beneath the horizon, behemoths of purple-deep shadow soaked in crimson at the edges. The sky becomes that calm, quiet periwinkle that always comes just before night sets in, as if the heavens, now purified by the red-gold spills of the sun, are refreshed and prepared–a baptism of fire that leaves a canvas for the coming night.
In these last moments, when the day is still in the heavens, chasing the sun behind the horizon, there is a deep feeling of tranquility–even peace for the soul.
The night, with its fresh moon and softly budding stars, is the more beautiful when it comes but gently on the last fragile wisps of day.
Theater Scribblings
These are just some random thoughts that I scribbled on the back of an envelope while I waited in the lobby of a theater before a play in which a friend of mine was acting. Fortunately, I was sitting with a friend who recognized the look I get on my face when I suddenly have the need to write something (I didn’t even know I had that look until she told me), and offered me both a pen and the envelope. Now that is true friendship. Reading it again recently, I realized that I kind of like it.
“There is a kind of magnetism in the production of a play.
It is the potent power of pretend; it is the high of seeing our inner life acted out before our eyes.
Indeed, theater is a natural expression of the human mind, for it is the very picture we seek to conjure into being from written word or music.
It is the mind, the dream, the very thought of a man (and if done correctly, all men) transposed by flesh and blood.
And to the artist, drama on stage is perhaps the greatest challenge, for it involves all the senses of both actor and audience.
To sincerely and powerfully present a play, the written words, the scenery, the costumes, the heart and mind of the actor, must all align in something both profoundly physical and innately spiritual.
To what cause, then?
To inspire, amuse, astonish, even to anger and infuriate the race of man.
To show his vices as well as his beauties, his pains and exaltations.
Theater frames the mind of man by showing him a facet of himself, whether to praise or condemn.
To be on stage, then, is to be the instrument of change within humanity itself.
So, dear actor, choose what type and class of change you will wreak upon your own society
with the utmost care and caution.”
An Adult’s Perspective of Absolutes
The more of the world I see, the more I am struck by the sheer absurdness of those “hollow philosophies” that Paul warns us of in Scripture. The very principle of a relativistic mindset–indeed, any philosophy that is not founded on the absolutes of Scripture–is not only illogical, but completely un-natural.
The world itself, as far as I can tell, is run on absolutes. Without them, nothing works. Societal norms, laws, even personal happiness, are all servants to some kind of absolute standard, whether of rightness or goodness or something else. Even language itself is absolutist by nature, relying on constant definitions outside of each person’s individual emotional attachment to words.
I am continually more aware that by denying the presence of absolute truths based on a God outside of this universe (and even if I know about them, refusing to act on them as if they are real), I am essentially acting like a spoiled, dillusional child. While I sit in a corner and scream at the tops of my lungs in hopes of making the world bend to my will (even though any adult could tell me that it won’t), God stands there looking at me as the kind, patient Father that He is.
“If only she would accept the way things are, and act accordingly,” He must say, “then she could finally start growing up, and leave these temper tantrums behind.” What parent hasn’t wished that for their child?
And yet we men as a whole have consistantly chosen the childish temper-tantrums of postmodernism, pantheism, humanism, and relativism. How very much like toddlers we are! How naive and childish must we seem to God as we strive against the natural, undeniable reality of life merely because it causes us some discomfort in our self-centered views.
Only now have I started to understand even an inkling of that promise, “The truth shall set you free”. There is no gauruntee of comfort there; the truth does not make things happy or event pleasant. And yet it does!
Is there not joy in leaving those empty philosophies of the world in favor of a more “adult” view of the world? What child does not, over course of time, realize how much better off he is in his understanding once he has matured? Is there not happiness and pleasantness in growing closer to the heart of one’s Creator, and of having true purpose and meaning?
This, then, is the freedom that truth gives us: the freedom of perspective, of disregarding those vain philosophies that would take us captive and keep us forever screaming in the corner.
I realize it is high time that I listen to my Father and stop throwing temper tantrums of fake philosophy, whether by believing them or acting like I do.
