Cure for deadly virus

Yesterday was a wonderful Easter. Our home seems empty and silent now with the family back in Michigan, but we’re thankful for great memories of their time here. It was beautiful to see the love with which neighbors, SIM friends, and members of our Sunday school class welcomed Jeremy back from Africa. He is so grateful to all who prayed for him and his African friends during those 6 months.

Thwack! Thwack! For several minutes at the close of our Sunday school class, the solemn pounding of nails into wood was the only sound heard. After a meditation on how the cross provided the cure for the sin virus—thus sparing God from having to destroy the virus carriers (us)—teacher Tom gave us a few silent moments to reflect on the past day or two and recall an actual sin we’d committed in deed or attitude. Then we wrote it on a scrap of black paper and filed past a cross to which a couple of class members symbolically nailed those sins. And we recalled joyfully that Jesus voluntarily gave Himself, then was restored to life, to which He now invites us as well.

Yesterday’s newspaper contained this beautiful paragraph by Mary Frances Schjonberg: “The events of Easter morning don’t mean that Good Friday never happened. His resurrection didn’t rewrite history; it rewrote the future. And the future is rooted in love and forgiveness and hope. Not that nothing bad will ever happen but that God will never abandon us no matter what happens and that God will always transform the darkness and death into light and life.” I love that contrast between rewriting history and rewriting the future. It’s easy to despair over our history, things we should not have done but did, or things we should have done but didn’t. And a dark voice glooms, “Too bad you can’t rewrite history. You’ve ruined the future of those you hurt.” But Jesus’ resurrection sings, “I’ve rewritten the future into love, forgiveness, hope, light, and life.”

A good long night’s sleep made up for the busyness of the past week, and I’m thankful for a new day. I need to make good progress on the next SIM magazine before time out for tomorrow's kemo.

Blessings,
Carol