Around the world today, Christians remember Christ’s death on that old wooden cross. Since last Easter, three things have given me a new appreciation for just how brutal, how torturous, how painful the first Good Friday was for Jesus. And for His loving Father who watched.
This week I walked my 15 lb. terrier Toby and watched helplessly while a vicious dog attacked him. That dog held my Toby in his jaws like a bunny ready to be a midday snack. Somehow Toby was able to escape and darted, cropped tail between his legs, across the street toward the safety of our house. My relief quickly switched to panic before a driver stepped on her breaks to avoid hitting Toby. In less than two minutes, I thought I was watching my baby’s life end mercilessly. Granted he’s just a dog, but still.
Last fall our friend Solomon took Mark and me to a Nigerian zoo to watch the zookeeper throw live goats to hungry lions. It was both fascinating and disturbing to hear the goats helplessly bleating, bleating, bleating, and then…silence as they became breakfast. They’re just goats, right? Then why do I see parallels between the goats and Jesus?
Just last month near Jos, hundreds of innocent women and children were surprised in the middle of the night by murderers who torched and hacked their homes and families. I have the luxury to stop looking at gruesome photos of lifeless children splayed on the ground, some wearing just torn shirts and dried blood. What’s life like now for the surviving villagers who watched their innocent sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, uncles and nieces and cousins senselessly murdered?
Easter, you can’t come too soon.
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