Thinking About Easter

I've been thinking about Easter because it's Easter. Easter means Jesus rose from the dead, but it's supposed to be after 3 days in the tomb, I'm not sure that works because if he died pretty late on Friday and got up pretty early on Sunday, that's only like 1.5 days in the tomb. Jews go with sundown as the end of the day, so let's say they got him in the tomb before sundown Friday. He spent at least part of a day Friday, probably like 0.2 of a day, then the whole day Saturday, then how early did he get up on Sunday? Pretty early, I guess! It was a big day, he had a bunch of stuff planned. So I'd guess he only spent 0.3 of that day in the tomb, tops.

Still, with the traditional figuring of days, the way Jews would do it, if you spent any part of Friday, all day Saturday and any part of Sunday in the tomb, they'd just say "three days." Because it's at least some part of three days. I just want to get that out of the way as quickly and as scholarly as possible, because some wise-guy always tries to bring that up.

Actually, that might be the first time I really heard or thought about that, but those wise-guys. You just know there might be one out there, trying to make a snide point with "math." You just want to pre-empt the wise-guy at his own game, sometimes!

So somebody said to me that the lesson of Easter is about how Jesus rose from the dead so we will too. That's a good lesson I guess. Is that the whole lesson though? It could mean more than that! I think about Jesus being God, and that makes me wonder about other things too. God. God goes and creates the whole universe, and then looks at us squiggly things over here in the corner and says: "I want to try being one of those things for awhile." Any way you look at it, either God was just really bored, or else maybe the lesson is that humanity itself must loom pretty big in the scheme of things, for God to want to try being one of us for awhile? And with a plan to get killed over it, too, in a really painful way! There has to be some pretty incredible reason for that. We must be kind of a big deal. Maybe it's just, maybe atheism is just a way for people who are uncomfortable with how big a deal we must be in God's eyes. So they can just sort of, avoid the issue.

It's one of the big mysteries of the faith, I guess. I can't solve it on the internet.

Easter's a pretty cool holiday. When I was a kid, I used to dye some pretty kick-ass eggs. All the kids would gather round, and there would be a strong smell of vinegar. But we wouldn't poke holes and blow out the yolks! No, we'd just hard-boil 'em. Within a week or so, all those painstakingly-colored eggshells would be cracked and peeled, colored bits and flecks carefully caught on paper towels to be balled up in a crunchily crumpled wad and trashed, and the egg inside would be eaten up.

Those eggs were not meant to last.