Happy Easter!

Get your own danged drink!

Tomorrow is the day.  We celebrate the big festival of His rising, although each day in the year the Eucharist is consecrated and offered to the faithful in the same commemoration.  This is one of the few days of Obligation in the church year, and we look forward to the feast each year.  The music and the prayers, the lilies and the vestments all speak of resurrection, new life, hope, and joy.


Rabbits and eggs and candy have nothing at all to do with this of course, just as fir trees have nothing to do with Christian Christmas, but all the same they are fun little traditions that can certainly be used and co-opted to tell the story.


When we were kids, our parents presented us with lavishly filled baskets of chocolate, sugar treats, marshmallow peeps, jellybeans, and chocolate caramels, usually along with a small fluffy bunny or chick.  The goodies lay in the plastic excelsior and we scurried away to our rooms to drool over the loot before we had to get dressed for church.  We all would eat far too much of the stuff during the day.  Our parents figured we might as well eat it and make ourselves good and sick and get it out of the way.


I however, was a saver.  One piece would be kept in a bottom dresser drawer, under the undies.  Usually it was the big chocolate rabbit or the chocolate covered marshmallow egg.  I would look at it over the months and delay gratification.  Sometimes I could hold out for two or three months!


One year, I came home from school and decided I would finally break into my rabbit and maybe eat the ears.  I opened the drawer and felt underneath the undies and pulled out the box only to discover that it had been opened and the ears, head, tail, and plenty of the body were gone!


My young brother and sister had found it while snooping in my room while I was at school and had given themselves permission for a pig out.  I of course ran to my mother with the evidence.  She reprimanded them but that was about it.  What could be done?  They couldn't provide me with a replacement although at the time I was all for sending them to a forced labour camp to make up the loss.  I had to either stay mad or forgive the little fiends.


Well, let me tell you, staying angry takes a whole lot of energy and it drains you pretty quickly.  It is too much work.  I eventually forgave the little sinners and found that the forgiveness did me much more good than it did them.  I was only about nine at the time but this experience did much to goad my thinking over the years about trespasses and the forgiveness thereof.  There was also an object lesson here about 'storing up treasure on earth where moths and mildew and thieves can get at it', but that is a topic for another day.


I wonder.  Does God feel relieved that He forgave us through Christ?  We still have to accept the gift and acknowledge it, but if my own relief when having practiced forgiveness is any indication, I believe He must have good feelings about it.  I am extrapolating of course, as God is pure Spirit and I have no idea HOW He experiences us or life or the universe or anything.  I can only know the truth of what Jesus tells me, and know that God was able to experience Creation through Christ.    


I think forgiveness makes Him happy.  I also think that He is happy when we forgive too.

I forgive the person who took that picture of me wearing bunny ears.  Yep.  It feels fine.


A happy and blessed Easter season to all of you.