Miriacle Sunday

Isaiah 29:16 -- "You have turned things around, as if the potter were the same as the clay."

The shops are filled with mothers finding new dresses for their daughters. Father and sons look for new neck-ties and forget about trying to get into the shoe department. Posters with cute bunnies and brightly colored eggs are everywhere and you HAVE to get tot he grocery store for the special on spiral cut ham before they are all gone. [which I really, actually have yet to do.]  Eggs and food coloring are all but sold out and so is that fake plastic grass.

It's Easter.

I remember another Easter.

Taking a Sunday stroll after services, the five of us in the Babb house-hold drove down some old dirt roads towards Times Beach on the east coast of Mindanao. It was a slow drive because hundreds of people lined the street in an Easter procession.  Earnest faces looked into the car windows with tears streaming down their cheeks and some collected dust from the road and poured it over their heads.  In the center, were angry looking men with whips and batons, following a single man carrying a very real and very heavy cross.  Blood from the whips mingled with the sweat on his back and streaks of blood ran down his face from the very real crown of thorns pressed into his scalp.

I couldn't take my eyes off of this odd and painful "parade".  I saw such pure devotion in the eyes of everyone in the crowd, dragging their feet in the scorching Sunday heat. Crying out loud and raising their arms toward Heaven.

Even though this happened every single Easter, I couldn't wrap my head around the people who volunteered to put themselves through the pain, through the heat exhaustion and dehydration.  They really DID nail themselves to that cross they were carrying and would hang there for hours. And yes, it did on occasion cause someone's death, but year after year, they would make this journey.  It was, to my young eyes, both beautiful and sad.

Beautiful that any human being could reach out and with complete devotion try to touch that humanity in Jesus Christ as he willingly took the path to the cross to die with all of our sin.  And sad, because, they couldn't get anywhere close. Knowing the sentiment might have been sincere, it didn't detract from the reality that the victory had already been won and there was no way to duplicate it, even in what some would consider a reverent demonstration. Were they worshiping our Jesus?  Or were they shining the spot light so brightly on themselves and their own pain that they forgot what it was really all about.  Wouldn't it have been more reverent to focus on Jesus in a private setting without a gawking crowd to cry and moan for us?  And did they not realize that all they needed to reach out to Jesus was ask for Him.  Call His name and accept grace?

I can't answer that question, really.  And I can't know what was really in the hearts of all those people.  But I KNOW, God turned things around.  The potter DID become the clay and the clay made a vessel in which all the grace and mercy could be brought to the rest of us.  We could not carry it.  Something new had to be created, shaped and molded into pottery that was made of stuff strong enough, pure enough, and perfect enough to carry it to the cross.

Not terribly unlike a last-minute interception and surprising touch-down with a field goal kicked to top it off - Jesus turned our score board around completely.  In the lengthy column of all  the reasons we can't be with God and see Jesus face to face, there is now a big fat ZERO. A shiny goose egg that encapsulates all of our wrong doing, all of our attempts at sacrifice and purification.  Next to it, Jesus is standing with an giant eraser. He is our victory. Our ONLY victory.

Picking  up a couple of Russell Stover chocolate bunnies
and putting them into my cart, I remember Easter. I look at the Easter Lillies piled up at the registers. I see the girls in pretty little hats with big bows and flowers and I remember Easter.  The REAL Easter.  I am so very, very thankful that God turned it around. That the precious blood of Jesus Christ was shed for me, for you, for all of us.