Black Friday

by on April 2, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Two thousand years ago, the leaders of Jerusalem arrested Jesus for numerous and sundry crimes against the people, the priests, and their God. They sent him to the Romans for justice and demanded that they crucify him. They filled the crowds with people paid to call for his head, and they watched the Romans whip him up and down the streets. They watched as he carried the cross he was to be executed on until even his toned, carpenter’s body was no longer able to carry it, and another was dragged from the crowd to take it the rest of the way to Golgotha. There they hammered stakes through his wrists and feet to pin him to the cross. There they lifted the cross and dropped it into a hole with him hanging from it. There they pierced his side with a spear. The ground quaked and day turned to night for three hours. It was the day that Jesus died.

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First Communion

by on April 1, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Two thousand years ago, a Jewish preacher named Jesus celebrated the Passover with the disciples he had taught for three years. They were his friends. His closest confidants. Brothers and sisters who had followed him all over Israel. He washed their feet, as a servant would for a master. He said that one of them would betray him. That even the fiercest of them would deny him in the following days. He told them to break bread and drink wine in remembrance of him and his covenant with them. Two thousand years later, that Communion is still observed all over the world. Every month, every week, someone is breaking bread (or some bread-like substance) and drinking wine (or juice or something akin to it) in remembrance of Jesus and the New Covenant he established with us.

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Palm Sunday

by on March 31, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Two thousand years ago, a Jew went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. He was a teacher that many listened to, riding into the city on a lowly donkey. But people placed their clothes on the ground before him as if he was a conquering king. They cut palm leaves off and cleaned the streets. They called on him to save them from centuries of Roman oppression. And the leaders of Jerusalem looked on at what the country bumpkins were up to and sneered. This was no king. He was a stupid hick preacher from a small town in the middle of nowhere. Nothing good came from there, let alone this idiot with delusions of grandeur. They would not let this… Jesus… do anything important while he was here. They did not know that Palm Sunday would still be celebrated all over the world two thousand years later.

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First Passover

by on March 30, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

This is a rather important week for the Western World. Thousands of years ago, before there even WAS a Western World to speak of, several families moved to Egypt to survive a drought. They lived there for centuries, had many children, and were enslaved to build great monuments to Egypt’s power. Until one day, Egypt decided there were too many of them and killed every male infant. One of them survived to be raised as a prince of Egypt, and when he grew up he demanded that the ruler let his people go. The ruler would not and God sent many plagues to break Egypt’s will. The last of them was the worst of them. An angel of death would come and kill the first-born male of every family, and only pass over them if they painted the blood of a lamb on their doorposts. Thousands of years later, this First Passover and the freedom it granted is still celebrated all over the world.

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Cancer and the Big Corona

by on March 29, 2021 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

My mom has cancer. It is not the first time. She has survived them all so far, thanks to the Mayo Clinic and their excellent team of doctors, nurses, and over a century of medical research and development. It’s a slow growing blood cancer that will need treatment, but they have drugs that take care of it with few of the after effects of chemotherapy. She will start them soon. And today she got her second corona shot. Thanks to the medical research and production initiated and pushed by President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, there is an effective vaccine right now, one year after all of this crazy started. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives, and the best medical system on the planet is what made that possible. Seyla.

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