With Easter just around the corner, Bruce went to our church’s worship band rehearsal yesterday evening. Yes, he’s still an excellent drummer.
For the first time in at least fifty years, I’m not involved in anything musical. Which feels weird. Being a musician has been a large part of my identity since my teen years. I still practice my guitar and my piano on a daily basis, but now that I’m old, I’m moving on to writing as a form of worship.
Writing has taken over my weekdays. It’s not like I’m some prophet, or a preacher, or anything great, for that matter. I just spin tales that place characters in impossible circumstances and tell how their faith helped them navigate through the sticky webs of danger, deceit, fear or hate.
However, talking about a true story with all the elements of a great suspense: danger, deceit, fear and hate, the Resurrection account of Jesus is the greatest story ever told, one I could have never dreamed up even on my most creative days.
Who would have thought a Hero would die and thus conquer?
How can death bring life?
Why would the enemy be loved instead of hated?
How can the weak be strong, the last be first, the slave be greatest among us?
Why did the Resurrection transform weak, sissy followers of Jesus into lions of faith, ready to die martyr’s deaths?
Who else but God could have conceived such a plan?
Even Satan, diabolically smart as he is, could never have conceived of a story like this Resurrection story. Maybe because he’s a liar and a hater, he just couldn’t see how love and self-sacrifice could conquer sin and death.
What a story!
“He never sinned, nor deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when He was insulted, not threaten revenge when He suffered.
He left His case in the hands of God, who judges fairly. He personally carried our sins in His body on the cross so that we an be dead to sin and live for what is right.
By His wounds you are healed. Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the guardian of your souls.”
(1st Peter 2:22-25)