This is Easter FIJ

 

Faith in Jasper Piece for The Booster: “This is Easter”

 

 

The English journalist, Steve Turner, wrote this piece called “Chance”:

 

If chance be/ the Father of all flesh/ disaster is his rainbow in the sky,

and when you hear

State of Emergency!/ Sniper Kills Ten!/ Troops on Rampage!

Whites go Looting!/ Bomb Blasts School!

It is but the sound of man/ worshipping his maker.

 

Go to the woods behind town. Saw down two lodgepole pine. Strip them of branches, notch them and fashion a cross. Set it up by the Park Info centre.

 

In an article entitled “The Meaning of Life” in Life magazine, Professor Stephen Jay Gould wrote: “We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures...We may yearn for a “higher” answer - but none exists. This explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating.”

 

Next, wait until midnight and then waylay an unsuspecting bar patron. Pound him, strip him, then affix him to said cross.

 

“I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality...We will train young people before whom the world will tremble.” Adolph Hitler

 

Make the sacrifice. Let the blood flow. Re-enact the dramatic, the spectacular, the mythic thing. Rub your nose in it. Light a bonfire. Try to manufacture an experience.

 

Ernest Van der Haag: “Though the bored person hungers for things to happen to him, the disheartening fact is that when they do he empties them of the very meaning he unconsciously yearns for by using them as distractions...No distraction can cure boredom, just as the company so unceasingly pursued cannot stave off loneliness. The bored person is lonely for himself, not, as he thinks, for others. He misses the individuality, the capacity for experience from which he is debarred. No distraction can restore it. Hence he goes unrelieved and insatiable.”

 

Alternately, purposely turn your back upon the hanging figure. Wait until day time and spread a blanket on the ground nearby and invite people to play cards, laugh and joke, as if the cross was not present, until such time as the authorities inter the body and dismantle the apparatus.

 

“Never morning wore to evening but some heart did break.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

Better still, rest in what has already been done and reflect on these statements: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

 

This is Easter.

 

Pastor Richard Bowler

Jasper Park Baptist Church