» Sunday, 22 April A.D. 2007
easter thoughts
These are from Easter weekend at our church; I meant to blog them then, but proving my slacker nature once again, I am late in doing so. No matter, Easter lasts for, what, seven weeks?
Life has an orientation, a final end toward which everything moves. I realize, however, that I can say this only because I am a Christian. I know that the human adventure moves on to fulfillment, not in glory, but in a rupture followed by a re-creation which is the consummation of the whole history. If I step outisde faith, the human adventure has no orientation of its own. It is not true that history as such has meaning...Human history is in fact a tale told by an idiot.
--Jacques Ellul
A Prospect of Heaven Makes Death Easy by Isaac Watts (I assume this is a hymn, but it was read more as a poem during our Good Friday service.):
There is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign,
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.There everlasting Spring abides,
And never-withering flowers:
Death like a narrow sea divides
This heav'nly land from ours.Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand drest in living green:
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan roll'd between.But timorous mortals start and shrink
To cross this narrow sea,
And linger shivering on the bank,
And fear to launch away.O could we make our doubts remove,
These gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the CAnaan that we love,
With unbeclouded eyes.Could we bu climb where Moses stood,
And view the lanskip o're
Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood
Should fright us from the shore.
posted by Nate @ 2:53PM