What Strange Blessing

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?


We have reached again the time of year which often gives me pause. Easter.

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?


The lead up to Easter is so different from the lead up to Christmas. In terms of social views, Christmas is a time of spending a tone of money and advertising starts right after Halloween (or even before). Easter, although plagued also by ads, is very different from Christmas. It is very easy for society to remember Christmas with ease, what is nicer then a baby in a stable, angels, and peace on earth. Even with the politics dictating the need of a Holiday tree, as if that some how makes it more acceptable, the general public has no real problem with the idea of Christmas or the 'holiday season' in general. Although, to go on a small tangent, if we start having Holiday trees, I think they should be put up for every single holiday, just to make it even. For a Holiday tree must be in general for all holidays, right? But I digress...

Were you there when they pierced him in the side?


However easy some find the truth behind the Christmas holiday, few have liked the idea of Easter. I think this is why it has become all about candy and egg hunts and celebrating the good things. Easter is, in reality, a strangely joyfully dark holiday. Palm branches have given way to whips and thorns. The slaughter of the passover lamb is in-acted on the body of God himself. The lead up to Easter is dark. There is slander, betrayal, torture, and death. The only other holiday that I know of to have this dark for story is that of the passover, which is really the practice, or place holder for the later real act. The blood is smeared on the doorways of our souls, so that death will be sent packing.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

The Thursday and Friday before Easter, are for me, a kind of catharsis. Once a year, I spend a good amount of time thinking about and praying about how fallen I am. I think a great deal on the sin of my life and the sin of the world. I feel heavily the burden that this places on my soul. I am reminded of how I called out among the many for his death, that I betrayed, convicted, beat, whipped, scorned, and crucified the man who came to save me. That I do not deserve the life that I am give, nor the blessings that I have so often forgotten. Who am I, what have I done, to deserve the pardon so painfully bought?

Were you there when God Raised Him from the Dead? 


It is only after I mourn my own awful state that I can rejoice Sunday with "He has Risen". I know that joy is coming. That in three days, everything will change. And it is a Strange (although wonderful) Blessing. But for now I feel the denial that to often plagues my lips and the sorrow of my own willfully, fallen ways.

Oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord?