Dear friends!I have been thinking about Christ's death. It is a common thought during this time of the year.
I found this picture today and a thought came to my mind. It is a sand sculpture that we saw in the north coast of Spain, Gijón, where we lived for 7 years. Isn't it true that sometimes we celebrate fervently the death and ressurrection and days after Easter the "elements of the wheather", little by little, eliminates those thoughts from our minds ... like sand in the wind.
I hope to live daily with this vivid imagine: that someone loved me enough to give his life for me!
I would like to share a few stories and thoughts about Easter. I hope you enjoy them.
The gift of life
While a patient at a hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, Philip Blaiberg told of the night when Christiaan Barnard, gowned and muzzled, walked into his sterile room carrying in his hand a plastic box. It contained his old herat. The eminent surgeon said: “Dr. Blaiberg, do you realize that you are the first man int he history of mankind to be able to sit as you are now, and look at his own, dead heart?”
Whata dramatic moment! What a miracle! Second unto it was when the courageous patient met for the first time the woman who had given him life, namely, permission for surgeons to remove the heart of her dead husband. Blaiberg asked, “What does one say in such circumstance? She had lost a life, I had gained one.”
This is precisely the gift of Christ “I came that they man have life, and have it abundantly’.
Resurrection Because the tomb was empty
One warm spring afternoon near Easter, a teacher gave a large plastic egg to each of her students. Then she sent them outside to find signs of life and put them inside their egg. Soon they returned. In one was a butterfly. In another was an ant. Others contained flowers, twigs, blades of grass. But one egg had nothing in it. Everyone knew whose it was - it belonged to a boy with Down’s syndrome. Some of the kids laughed at him. The teacher asked him why he had not put any signs of life in his egg. He said quietly, “Because the tomb was empty.” That boy knew a profound truth - Easter is more than a celebration of nature’s life cycle.
Reasons for not visiting the empty tomb - Herschel Hobbs
After Mary Magdalene left the tomb there is no evidence that any believer ever returned to it. Furthermore, there is no Gospel evidence that any of the enemies of Jesus ever visited the tomb. His enemies did not go because they were afraid it was empty. Jesus’ friends did not return to the tomb because they knew it was empty!
The Stations of the Cross -- Lavon Brown
Every year thousands of people climb a mountain in the Italian Alps, passing the "stations of the cross" to stand at an outdoor crucifix. One tourist noticed a little trail that led beyond the cross. He fought through the rough thicket and, to his surprise, came upon another shrine, a shrine that symbolized the empty tomb. It was neglected. The brush had grown up around it. Almost everyone had gone as far as they cross, but there they stopped.
Far too many have gotten to the cross and have known the despair and the heartbreak. Far too few have moved beyond the cross to find the real message of Easter. That is the message of the empty tomb.
Among chocolate candies and bunny rabits, let's not forget the sweetest gift of all: the death of Christ on the cross for me and for you!
Happy Easter!
