Greater love than this …
It’s Easter this weekend. This weekend I’m celebrating love.
It began on the Thursday evening with a remembrance that true leadership requires bending low, in service to those we lead.
Today, Youngest and I went to church to commemorate a crazy, unimaginable dying by a man who said he was God, someone who claimed to be dying for all of us. Either he was mad or he was serious.
It doesn’t matter, not really …
The fact was he did die, after great suffering.
Those of us who celebrate Easter also believe he rose again! And sometime, when this mad drama of the spinning world is played out, he’ll return. Either we’re mad or we’re serious.
It doesn’t matter, not really. Faith is a very personal thing. If it feels like there could be sense to it, well … But if all this dying, and resurrecting and coming again seems fantastical, well then …
What makes sense are the words said before this man died – “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down one’s life for another”
To lay down one’s life for someone else by dying, that’s something, a big something. I don’t belittle the gift I believe has been given. But it has always seemed to me that letting go and dying is easier than living. To lay down our lives in conscious sacrificial living, to live each day in love, ears open, heart soft, that’s my difficulty. To set that old pride and ego aside, to say not me but you first.
Ahhh…to carry that cross of life, human, un-redeemed life!
If only I could. If only we all could.
Imagine how the world might be redeemed. If everyone died a little more to sub-conscious me-me-me each day. If everyone lived a little more for another – god, man, our fellow people, this earth …
Happy Easter!
Reader and Writer - Praying Woman - Gardener - Foodie 
Happy Easter, Aud! I love the last para – sums up the messages of Holy Week so well.
Ps – I would use sub-conscious rather than unconscious though.
Mame…Yup, subconscious is better. I’ve amended it.
😊
Last year was the first time the full awfulness of Holy Saturday (today) came home to me after going to the Good Friday afternoon service and to the Stations of the Cross with my atheist husband, leaving church seeing the empty tabernacle with its open door. Bereft. I very much like what you say here, Audrey. Christianity may or may not be ‘real’ or ‘true’ but the principles of love one another, do unto others – well, what could be more conducive to a better world? Happy Easter to you for tomorrow – and the rest of the season! Mary
HI Mary … Sometimes empty is good. It can be a metaphor for the clearing out of ego and the letting in of something else. Its a week after Easter and I’m so glad I had this time of clearing. Thank you for coming by to visit. I do so enjoy your comments.
Audrey happy easter to you, I took my mother to church, I rarely go and was surprised that I got a feeling of love and warmth on that day from god. We had a joyful sunday lunch with family. Nothing better.The funny thing was my mother and I both took something different away from the sermon, something both of us needed to hear for ourselves.
Hi Kath … I know it’s more than a week since Easter but only managed to get back to the blog today. It’s funny isn’t it how we “hear” messages. Last Sunday I heard the one about “those sins you forgive will be forgiven and those sins you retain will be retained”. The RC Church hears that as a mandate for priests to give absolution during confession. Be that as it may, what I heard was … “Well, if you forgive someone then you have, and if you don’t, you’ll be carrying it around.” That was interesting.