Good Friday, Writing Eastward

today, i heard that song being played, and i thought of you. i wish i could put those memories to death, and to some extent they have already been. but it is not that difficult for them to come clawing back through the sand, when by human reckoning, they aren't really many years away from the present.

do i resurrect them in this post, or do i speak of another resurrection.


sometimes i get a stirring of how the Israelites must have felt, waiting for the Messiah. conscious of their sin and exiled from the land which was meant to be the fulfilment of a promise to them, they heard rebuke after rebuke, reminding them of their unfaithfulness, and yet promise after promise, reminding them of God's eventual restoration. to live with such a history, with all the should-have-beens and could-have-beens, and to hear again and again that one day, someone would come to free them from this disgrace that they had brought upon themselves - what a wait that must have been. and then one day, to come across a man who seemed so ordinary, until he began to preach and to bring a glimpse of heaven to this dying, diseased world. here was a man who arrests all your attention, and you stare at him in amazement as he breaks and crumbles all the shackles of this world - the hopelessness of sicknesses, the disgrace of disease, the grief of death. a wild current of hope surges through your frame as you wonder for a moment, as you entertain the thought, as you try to shape the possibility in your head, that this might be, he might be the Messiah.


what is this marvellous thing that You have done, that You would come to set us free from sin.