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

Meditations on the Church's Easter Message

I would like to apologize right now for not keeping up the blog content. The truth is I've just had trouble thinking of something interesting to write about. I'll be honest, I couldn't think of anything.





So, um...yeah, I guess that's it, you can all go home now.






Or I could give you my thoughts on the Church's Easter video this year.
Yeah, that second one. Let's do the second one. Let's do that thing.

For those of you who haven't seen it here's a link and another one to the Youtube version.
I'll be honest with you (again), this thing had me bawling worse then when Zayn left One Direction

"Too soon?"

Okay, I'll be serious now, because there was some really good stuff in this thing.
It starts out like you'd expect it to, nice music, talking about Jesus, all good stuff. But what turned the faucets on for me was around the 1:22 mark. It says "He is here/ During the good/ the bad/ the in-between" What really got me was that 'in-between bit where it shows a woman causally eating ice cream straight from the carton. 

"I can relate to this."

But I found it very insightful. Much of life is neither good or bad. It is very much in-between. Yes, Christ is there in the dark moments when we need him the most and he is with us in the high moments of our lives, but we don't really talk about him being with us in the rest of our lives. The times when you're just siting improperly in a chair in a dimly lit room eating ice cream straight from the carton because it's just been that kind of day. You know those moments, when everything is just...blah. It's in those moments that I think it's hardest for us to accept Christ. When we're not on some spiritual high, but far from our darkest most desperate moments. He cares about us even in those moments. That is a beautiful thought to me.

My second rain of tears (note to self: copyright "Rain of Tears" for band name/video game/special finishing move) came around the 1:34 mark. "He is here/ no matter who you are/ or who you were/ no exceptions/ no lost causes"
This got me thinking about outer darkness. I've always understood that in order to be sent to outer darkness a person needs to have a perfect testimony of Christ and then completely deny him. Because of the veil most of us will never reach the level of having a perfect testimony of Christ. I also believe that a huge majority of humanity will make it into the Celestial Kingdom. Christ does not give up on people. He is not a quitter. Think about it, He walked on water because his friends were about to give up. He toughed out basic laws of physics, just because His buddies were having a hard time. He will give us every chance possible to make it back home with God. He puts a lot of work into each and every one of us and He is not about to let that go to waste.

The video ends with #BecauseHeLives and encourages us to share. So here's my thing.
#BecauseHeLives a little weirdo like me who is chronically sarcastic can find peace and beauty in the mundane monotony of everyday life and function as a semi-normal human.

Namaste y'all
Michael