I confess that Easter may be my favorite day of the entire year. I love to tell the story. It never gets old. I confess that I love the fact that the culture hasn’t found a way to completely steal Easter yet. It has not yet become an overtly commercialized Christian holiday.
I confess that the day after Easter is one of my least favorite days of the year for me for two reasons – It’s sot of like the ultimate ministry hangover hits me as soon as I wake up.
I confess that today I feel like the one guy in the choir who kept singing after the conductor signaled the end of the song.
Christmas and Easter are the two biggest Christian holidays. As a pastor I spend week’s trying to cultivate in myself and in my congregation the means to observe and celebrate these things faithfully. Christmas is more like a feast week or a season. Christmas Eve turns into Xmas Day & rolls on to the New Year w/little work & no school. Easter is different. The moment Easter Sunday is over, everybody is back at it the very next day. I confess that I always feel a little jilted. I have been attempting to keep my foot on the accelerator since Ash Wednesday, and on the Monday after Easter I find it hard to come to a complete stop.
I confess that the day after Easter is also difficult for me because it was the day the biggest church hurts I have ever experienced blew up. I confess that today this story has redemption written all over it, and has become a story I love to tell about fidelity and love. But today I mark the day it all started & it always makes me a little bit sad. I confess to wondering what secret sins are tearing people’s lives apart… people I love. I confess that I wish we could all be free.
I confess that I don’t know how anyone survives without the church. People say that they would gladly die for things, like their kids or their faith. But I think the true test of love and fidelity isn’t the willingness to die for something, but the willingness to live for it. Redemption Church – the people I mean, not the institution – they seem to know how to live for one another.
I confess that I have not watched the kid from Louisville break his leg in the NCAA tournament, and I probably won’t. I confess that I’ve still not recovered from watching Joe Thiesmann break his leg on Monday Night Football. I confess that I hate watching other people suffer. It gives me the shivers.
I confess that I’m reading A Prayer for Owen Meany again for maybe the sixth or seventh time. It’s been almost a decade since I last read it & and have forgotten how funny this book is. It’s a masterpiece – I think it is Irving’s finest work (although I haven’t read his latest two).
I confess that I’m watching House of Cards right now and cannot find one redeeming character to root for or identify with – but I can’t stop watching. I can’t figure out who to root for. I confess that I’m also watching Scandal, and have a similar issue with that show. It’s as though the only story anyone can tell about Washington right now is of political nihilism and Neroesque sexuality and violence. I’m thinking art imitates life, right?
I confess to being completely ambivalent about the beginning of the baseball season. I confess that I feel like I’ve been conditioned to feel this way since the Royals are perennially awful. Even though I know there might be reason to hope this year, all I can think of is Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football… good grief!
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