There is much written about Good Friday. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross is incomprehensible to my puny human intellect. There is much written about Easter Sunday. Christians around the world rejoice and proclaim that “He is risen!”. But there is not nearly as much written about one of the saddest and most confusing days in history. The Saturday between the Friday horror of Jesus on the Cross and the Sunday mystery of the resurrection. Some churches do observe Holy Saturday but it was never a tradition in my faith upbringing. I have been thinking about what that day must have been like for those who dropped everything to follow Jesus. How crushing those events had to be. I imagine the fear they felt that they would also be killed. And for what? On Saturday they feared they had given their careers and their very souls for a false hope. I think in particular of Peter. I identify
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Followers of Jesus confidently proclaim that Jesus is the answer. I believe that. But it is fascinating to see how Jesus, the one with all the answers, dealt with those who asked Him questions. The Gospels record 183 times that Jesus is asked a question. He directly answered only three. That is not a typo. Three. If you want to do a little extra credit homework they are John 18:37, Luke 11:1, and Matthew 22:36-37. I was more that a little surprised when I first learned of those numbers. The Gospels also note that Jesus asked 307 questions. There is clearly something to be gleaned from these numbers. Without a doubt I believe that Jesus knew the answers. He also knew the heart and motives of the questioners. So why in the world would he deflect and ask a question instead of just answering directly with the perfect wisdom of God? The technique Jesus used most often was answering a
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A recent study published by the Psychology Department at the University of Essex looked at the negative emotional and cognitive effect of hearing bad news only. Here is the opening statement from the study. Journalists employing the maxim “if it bleeds, it leads” seem intuitively aware of the negativity bias people have in attending to and remembering bad events over good ones. Indeed, negatively valenced news dominates the press and is shared on Twitter more frequently than positively valenced news journals.plos.org The study went on to note that “news featuring others’ immorality captivates people, it can have aversive affective and cognitive impacts, increasing emotional disturbances and negatively skewing people’s belief in the goodness of others”. I think we have witnessed that increasing and divisive effect on our culture. The authors are correct that such reporting of bad news “captivates” and leads to lots of unhealthy biting on the clickbait of negativity. The study examined an interesting counterbalance. Would showing acts
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You don’t have to dig too deep into my writings to know that I am a dog lover. For some reason I seem to gain spiritual insight from these wonderful creatures. On social media I follow lots of organizations that rescue dogs. This photo touched my heart. The photo on the left shows two sweet dogs one hour before they were rescued and adopted. Look at their faces and body language. On the left you see fear and sadness. After the miracle of rescue you see a total change. They are new creatures full of joy and excitement. The picture reminded me that I sometimes forget that I was once trapped in that place of fear and sadness. And then I heard the Good News of the Gospel. That Jesus came to forgive me, adopt, and rescue me. My initial photo after having that weight lifted would have resembled those joyful faces on the right. But something happens if we
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