Behold, The Lord Is Risen!

Easter! The victory of light over  darkness. A distinct manisfestation of Jesus’ conquest of physical death, of God’s supreme power. A shining representation of hope for all.

To many people, however, the idea of Easter is either irrelevant or simply too fantastic. Those that are so caught up in their day-to-day struggles have no time to even think of hope. Those that have seen only hardship in their whole lives know nothing else to think about.

The rest who are a little luckier find it unnecessarry to think things over, either. They spend their every waking moment seeking the most pleasures from their blessings. To them, as well, their own needs, their own lives are the only ones that matter.

It is common among people of means to become quite self-righteous. It ceases to be an issue with them where their advantage in life is coming from, whether it springs from their own efforts or from others’, whether it comes from legitimate endeavors or from questionable means. Their exalted status is their ultimate vindication.

It is easy for rich people to judge the poor. Poverty is the fruit of one’s sloth, they’d say. They fail to consider that there are poor people who work the hardest yet whose dogged efforts don’t seem to yield proportionate good. Some tend to forget that they themselves didn’t reach where they are by their own efforts alone.

It’s so easy for people whose own lives are going right to preach faith. Even the clergy does it, quite often, in fact. Ministers, pastors and priests try to console the downtrodden and the needy by making it look like poverty is a gift. But they themselves – the preachers – don’t have to worry about their next meal, have comfortable clothes and a secure place to come home to.

Yet, come to think of it: Poverty may really be a gift, after all.

There’s a story about a rich businessman who was visiting his seaside vacation house in a remote province. The morning after he arrived, he saw his house caretaker come home after a whole night of fishing. After giving his catch to his wife, the caretaker then went to rest in a hammock he built under a tree.

The businessman was just observing his trusted guy. But as soon as it got rather late, he couldn’t help approaching the resting guy. “What are you doing,” he asked him.

“Resting, Sir,” the man replied casually. “I stayed up the whole night at sea.”

“Yes, but you don’t really look very tired. Besides, don’t you think an hour or two is enough for you to recover, if you’re tired at all?”

“There’s nothing else to do for now, Sir. I’ve done what needed to be done. As you can see my plants are growing well. My animals are healthy. And my boat doesn’t need any repairing yet,” the man explained.

“But you’re wasting precious time!” the businessman pointed out. “You should be doing something else productive. The weather is good, you can probably go back to the sea to catch more fish.”

“Well, there’s already enough fish for us for today, Sir. I will go back to the sea tonight.”

The businessman explained that it was not enough to just be able to catch fish for the family’s consumption. He suggested that his estate caretaker catch more fish and sell them. With the proceeds, the fellow could soon buy another boat.

“But why another boat, Sir?” the caretaker asked, “I need only one.”

“So you can have more income. With more money, you can soon buy yet another boat, and another one, and another…”

“But what about rest, Sir? You mean I should not rest?” the caretaker inquired.

“Well,” the businessman slowed down, “you will have rest. When you become very rich like me, you can already afford to take a vacation. You can get away for a day or two without having to think of work.”

“Ah, so it’s still about having time for rest, in the end,” the caretaker said, clearly getting his boss’s point. “I already have that now, Sir.”

Okay, you might say, but what about security? What if the weather suddenly turned bad and the caretaker couldn’t go to sea? What would happen now? What would he feed his family?

It is like asking: What if there’s really no God? Then faith becomes a senseless thing. That’s what.

Some friends well-versed in the subject of theology tell me that faith itself is a gift one is given. God puts it in you, they say; you only need to respond to it. So, even if you are “called”, it’s all up to you whether to take heed or not.

I am not totally with my friends on that “gift” position. Well, maybe my understanding on the issue is little. If faith is a gift, I believe that it is a gift you give yourself. The mere fact that one has the freedom about how to respond to the seed of faith that God puts in him makes it all a choice, basically.

I take full responsibility for my faith or, for that matter, for my not having any. I choose to believe that we are all born into a life of endless possibilities. That’s God’s fundamental gift to us—that we can make something or be something, if we work earnestly enough at it.

“Behold, the Lord is risen.” That’s the core message of the Easter celebration. He promised that He would “never be gone away” from us. The Lord has kept his word.

Easter is only a mere symbol. And the whole idea may be necessarry only for those who have doubts. It is a reminder at least that one’s faith has basis, a proof of sorts that the God one believes in did not die for long.

The God I believe in did not die, never does and never will. But I believe in Easter, too. Although my Easter does not only come around once a year after Lent. My Easter throbs at every single moment of my life, an inexplicable feeling of certainty that God is always watching over me. 

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