Easter Sunday

       

I'm baaaaaaaaaack!

          Happy Easter Sunday, all y'alls! For today I thought I'd go head and talk about my thoughts on the Church's other Easter video "Follow Him—An Easter Message about Jesus Christ" Go on and watch it, I'll just be here, waiting.

What? No, I'm not loading anything, this is just my waiting gif.

          Done? Good. Let's jam about it, my groovy cats

          I'm just going to dive right in, okay? In order to go along with someone's request to "follow me" it requires, as the video said, trust, belief and action. But how do we get those three things? I'd say action is the best place to start. As we act on Jesus's call to follow him we build trust in Him. From trust comes belief that He can help up and with trust and belief we then are better equipped to act than before. 

          Now at about the 40 second mark the narrator makes a point I would like to touch on. They mention that Jesus's invitation to follow Him will show us how to love others and how to love ourselves. Loving others is relatively easy, mostly because most people go to great lengths to put their most lovable attributes at the forefront. But loving ourselves is a little more complicated because we can see behind the facade. It can be hard to love yourself because you know all your dirty secrets. But it is part of God's plan that we learn to love ourselves. That may seem contrary ,though. God asks us to look beyond ourselves but also wants us to love ourselves? Crazy, right? WRONG.

           We are suppose to be like Christ, right? Well, you know what? Jesus likes you, and if you want to be like Jesus you have to like you, too. Jesus suffered for you, died for you, literally went to Hell and back for you, face it, weather you like it or not, you're worthy of being loved.

I guess that's all I have for you guy's today, so.

Namaste, y'all,

Michael

          

Easter Saturday

          I said I'd be back so here I am! Saturday post!

          No! Come on, get back here!

          It'll be short, I promise.


          In thinking on what to share for today I realized that the Saturday after the Crucifixion was probably the second most uneventful day recorded in scripture. (The first was when back in Genesis when God took the day off ). At least it would have appeared so from the perspective of the early Christians. On this day all the action happened behind the scenes, and the followers of Christ were left to just think.
          Why did he do that? Simple. Because boy-oh-boy did those people have a lot to think about. Their leader who they believed to be the Son of God, who preformed many miracles right in front of them, who time and again escaped death had just been killed. They were feeling lost and confused and sad and probably a million other emotions that I will never know. So they were given time and space to feel those things.
          Sometimes people get the misconception that we need to suppress our feeling in order to master them. This makes our feelings far more complicated than they need to be. It makes our emotions out to be invaders or conquerors who want to take over and make us do all sorts of things. This is false. Feeling only want one thing; to be felt. Let them do that and they will pass. They may be strong feelings and long lasting ones, but they will pass. So much suffering is caused from people refusing to accept how they feel. Accept how you feel and you can realized why you feel that way. Once you realize the origin of those feelings you can then act on them.
          So for today I would like to challenge you to slowdown for a second and just process your life, your feelings, who you really are. Then you can figure out where you're going.

Namaste, y'all,
Michael

Good Friday

          Forgive me readers for I have sinned. The sin that is most abominable among all the sins of a blogger; I have failed to offer up interesting content.
         In my defense, though, I just couldn't think of anything interesting. BUT something just came up to help me out; Easter.

Embed from Getty Images

         So for the Easter weekend I'm going to give you some content. Aren't I generous? "But where oh where are you going to find such content?" I hear someone ask. Oddly specific and useful question, guy standing outside my window. I think a good place to start would be with the Church's Easter video for this year; "#Hallelujah" Go ahead and click that link to watch it. Go on, I'll wait.

          Done? Good. Let's get down to it.
          First off, let me get this off my chest; I'm not a fan of the title. #Hallelujah just sound kind of weird to me. Maybe it's the juxtaposition of an ancient and meaningful word like 'Hallelujah' with a fresh new word like 'Hashtag'. Maybe I just hate the alliteration. Maybe it hits a little too close to #blessed for me. But I can see why the Church would do that. After all, in today's world if it doesn't have a hashtag it doesn't exist. So I'll set that aside for now.

          Assuming you really did watch the video, you'll know that it basically talked about Christ's death and resurrection and what that means for us. Specifically, it touched on how death is conquered through Christ. "For as in Adam all die, Even so, in Christ shall all be made alive."
          Now this got me thinking, What does that even mean? What is death, anyways? Now before you call me an idiot for questioning something so basic-

          -Wow, hurtful. Let me explain. Death is basically the loss of the ability to function. When a battery loses power, it's dead, when a pen runs out of ink, it's dead, Generally speaking, when something dies, that's it, it's done, kaput, no more, game over, man, game over. But, as the video points out, Christ's resurrection from death means that all death can be overcome. This included the big, obvious deaths, like death of the body and the death of the spirit though sin. But it also includes the little things, like the death of a social life, the death of love, the death of passion for a job, the death of peace in your life, The death of a blog (You know who you are!). If you feel like there's something in your life that just doesn't work anymore, the atonement can help you resurrect that, bring it back better than ever.
          And I think we should use it for these little things. How can we expect to use the atonement to it's full effect for the big things if we are afraid to use it for the little things?
          Resurrection is possible for all things and it will always be an improvement on what came before.
Namaste, y'all,
Michael