The alarm goes off on Easter morning. Regina has the radio set to 104.7 the FISH. (It’s one of those little sacrifices of marriage I guess. ) I have to be at church early for Worship Team practice so I roll out of bed and head toward the shower. As the song that’s playing is ending and the DJ starts talking and she says something to the effect of:

While today is Easter and we celebrate Jesus and the empty tomb, remember that next weekend you can celebrate this beautiful Spring season at the Atlanta Dogwood Festival. It will be Saturday and Sunday at Piedmont Park with games, live music, food, arts and crafts, and fun for everyone. Bla bla bla.

I’m not one to make tradition or earthy icons into false idols of Holiness but for some reason this struck me as odd. Today is the day that God’s plan for redeeming the fallen human race is finally realized and it’s being used side by side in an advertisement for the Atlanta Dogwood Festival – how low has the Christian subculture gotten? This made me remember something that happend earlier on Friday.

Good Friday is often overlooked but has always been significant to me. I have always imagined scenes like Mel Gibson delivered in his film, while other believers seemed to gloss over it and go straight for the stone being rolled away on a sunny morning with birds chirping and flowers blooming. It was always one of my favorite services while we were at Fellowship Bible. It was intense as we, some of the most spoiled people in the world, took time to remember the great “inconvenience” that Christ endured in His obedience to the Father. Tim, the worship director, was always mindful to “leave Jesus in the grave” at the end of the service to make people think about the great sense of mourning and hopelessness that was felt by those involved.

So like I said, it’s a significant day for me. As I was at work on Friday, a coworker had a little fuzzy thing with googly eyes and feet sitting on his computer monitor. Attached to the fuzzy thing was a tag that said, “Jesus loves you.” Somehow I was sickened to think of the great physical pain that Jesus endured – not to mention the unthinkable spiritual pain of taking on the very wrath of God – and see the message of that event summed up and attached to a fuzz ball with googly eyes.