a good day

I went in to the girls' room this morning and I said "it's a good day girls, it's a very good day." And it was.

I spent most of it in the kitchen. Making hot cross buns for the first time, cleaning up from making hot cross buns, feeding people, cooking dinner. The sky was blue and clear and the sun was warm and the girls spent most of it outside. My thoughts were constantly turning back to this day two thousand years ago. That day, as I told the girls at breakfast, which was so sad and so wonderful.

We finally sat down to eat late. I put out green salad and potato salad to eat with schnitzel and lit a candle. It was haphazard, hardly planned, but beautiful. We prayed and ate together, and then Paddy decided to pull out his phone and read from John. It was about the time of the afternoon that Jesus died, way back then. When the sky grew dark. It wasn't dark here as we listened to those words, so familiar and yet new all over again, but our hearts were heavy.

I noticed something I'd never noticed before. In John 19 the narrator describes how one of the Roman soldiers was ordered to break the legs of the three crucified, so they could hurry up and die. Jesus was already dead, so his legs were not broken, and the passage goes like this;

But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you may also believe.  (John 19:32-35)


And it hit me that this is why I live the way I do. Because I believe the testimony of those people, all those years ago. Ordinary people who lived ordinary lives until they met Jesus. And then they witnessed the strangest, most unexpected series of events.

Bishops and televangelists and soap-box preachers alike all want you to believe that the story of the Christian faith is a seamless narrative. That it begins at the beginning, moves through to a second beginning, and will finish in good time and in a manner that can be predicted, if you read the clues right. They think their job is to convince you by making it all seem reasonable, believable. And right there is where they fail.

There's nothing reasonable about the story of Christ. It's hardly plausible, barely possible. It is filled with mystery. I can't give you scientific evidence for my faith in those witnesses of old, but I can tell you about the mystery. I can tell you that I felt my spine tingle as I listened to this song while I was busy in the kitchen. I can tell you that my heart warms when I pray, that the whisper I often hear is not my own. I can tell you about growth, and I can tell you about hope.

There is plenty of evidence that the gospels can be read as history, as reliable as any of the texts we have from those far away days. Sure there are discrepancies between voices, and some of the details get lost in translation. But many of the facts are confirmed from sources outside of the bible. It's a story that has more than a ring of truth to it.

After dinner we left Paddy at home perfecting another batch of hot cross buns, and went to visit the favoured brand new cousin. The late afternoon sun was still warm and the sky still blue. We took hot cross buns, of course, the best of them, and we cuddled and fed and doted on that precious boy. There was washing to fold, and stories to hear, and a family to watch as they tried on their family-of-six-ness for size. It was good.

Nothing is easy, and nothing is perfect, not on this side of things. But there's a sense of motion and growth amongst the Christ-followers I know. They believe the ancient testimony, and it changes them.